


Above and Below

by vailkagami



Series: (Boy) Kings [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Demon Dean Winchester, Demon Sam Winchester, M/M, Psychic Bond, Rape/Non-con References, Sibling Incest, Torture, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-24
Updated: 2011-10-24
Packaged: 2017-10-24 22:40:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/268682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vailkagami/pseuds/vailkagami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winchesters aren't the only ones occasionally suffering from bad luck. There's a human, for example, who was taken from his family, died, refused eternal peace in order to play meat-suit for an angel, and then had to watch his angel turn himself into a slightly psychopathic god. To make matters worse, the poor human is assigned the task of taking care of a guest in Heaven who came straight from Hell: Sam Winchester, the boy king, taken hostage and threatened in order to make his equally demonic brother follow the new god's orders. And the new god is anything but patient, or merciful.<br/>But neither, the human discovers, are Sam and Dean - especially when it comes to their respective brother being harmed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work was created for a big bang. You can find pach-gurl's wonderful artwork here.

A single human soul is present when the boy king of Hell arrives in the great hall. He is being escorted by four angels and his hands are bound by chains, yet he doesn’t look like he is coming as a prisoner. He walks tall, proud, so that the four angels look like his followers rather than his guards. When he stops in front of the New God, he does not bow.

The soul remembers him from when they were both human and mortal: a shaggy-haired boy full of cynical pragmatism who no longer believed that the world had anything good to give. But he  did give that day – he saved the wife of the man the soul used to be, and that’s what the soul remembers when it sees him now: the hair longer, the frame leaner, sporting a pair of large black wings on his back and chained in Heaven.

The demon steps in front of the New God unafraid and says, “I’m here. Now keep your side of the bargain.”

The New God gestures to the angels standing left of his throne and a door at the other end of the hall is opened, providing entry to another demon and his entourage of angels. This demon doesn’t have wings but he, too, is chained, and him the soul remembers as well.

While the boy king seems calm and composed, if far from pleased, the other demon radiates rage. He glares at the New God, then at the boy king. His brother. The soul remembers that, too.

“You’re a fucking moron, Sammy,” the demon says. “What were you thinking, coming here?”

“I was thinking there might be enough of the old Cas left in _that_ ,” the boy king nods towards the New God, “to honour his word. I was also thinking that he has no qualms about killing friends if he has no use for them, so what exactly was I supposed to do?”

“You know what they fuck you were supposed to fucking _not_ do!”

The boy king seems irritated more than anything else. “Yeah, well, think again.”

“Are you quite done?” the New God interrupts their conversation. “Time is of the essence.” He turns to the wingless demon. “You know what to do. Leave now.”

The demon doesn’t leave yet. “What about Sam?” he asks. “You’re not going to hurt him, or you’re the one I’m hunting next!”

The New God isn’t impressed. “You cannot harm me, old friend. Do as I say or your brother will be hurt gravely.” He stands from his throne and gestures to his angels again. “Sam will remain in my custody until you have accomplished what I ask of you. He will be treated well as long as you obey, but he will be restrained all the time. He will be limited to one room and you have no right to see him until your work is done, at which point he will be handed back to you. Failure on your part will result in punishment to your brother to be administered in your presence. If you work well, I expect you to finish your mission in less than ten years.”

“Ten years?” his “old friend” spits out. “He won’t make ten years! Hell, he won’t make one!”

“You should get started, then.”

The demon growls and looks like he’s going to attack the New God despite the angels guarding him and the threat to his brother. The soul is reminded that he is indeed a creature of Hell now, no longer the noble human he used to be when they met.

“Dean!” Sam says harshly, and just with that, his brother snaps out of it.

There is a hard line around the boy king’s face when he turns to the New God. “You’re playing with fire, Cas.”

“I do not have to explain myself to you, demon,” the New God lets him know. “And now I’d appreciate you stopping to waste my time. I have important matters to attend to.”

Sam glares at him and makes a sound reminiscent of a snort. Then, as the New God moves to dissolve the gathering and have everyone go where they belong, he walks swiftly over to his brother and pulls him close, ignoring the guards who move to stop him. The lips of the two demons meet in a hard kiss that looks more like a declarance of war to everyone around them than a sign of affection.

The chains make it difficult, but Sam manages to fist his hands into Dean’s hair, and Dean, after a second of surprise, takes hold of the lapels of Sam’s shirt and pulls him even closer. Their tongues battle for dominance while an audible gasp goes through the hall. One angel whispers “Incest!” as if the word was equal to ‘genocide’, and another one hisses “Blasphemy!” as if those two, of all people, should care.

Eventually they break apart and, still holding each other so close their chests are almost touching, turn to look at the gathered angels and the New God with their black eyes.

Dean smirks. The look on Sam’s face is unreadable.

Then, before the angels can separate them, they let go and Sam returns to his own guards while Dean allows his to lead him outside. He is gone by the time one of the angels strikes Sam across the face with a harsh, punishing blow that makes him stumble.

Sam’s reaction is another snort. The soul doesn’t want to imagine what would have happened if Dean had seen it.

The New God is already gone. Without further comment, the boy king walks towards the exit of the hall and the cell that has been prepared for him, giving his guards no other choice but to follow.

 

 

*+*+*

 

 

The next time the human soul sees the boy king is what feels like one day later. The soul has been in heaven for long enough to know that time is very relative here, but also that it doesn’t matter as long as one has no connections to people on earth whose perception of time would differ. And the soul doesn’t. None it can return to.

The soul is sent to the boy king’s cell by the New God himself. This is the reason it was part of that gathering the day before: to do the job right, it has to be informed of what is going on.

The cell is located in what looks like the corridor of a very fancy hotel. The door looks like the door of a normal room, and the room behind looks like a normal room as well, except that it doesn’t have a window.

The door has no lock and no guards. The prisoner cannot leave. It’s simple as that.

There’s no bed either, although the soul doesn’t even realise it’s missing for a second. It’s actually quite fascinating: with the pleasant colours, the elegant wallpaper and charming little lamps providing soft yellow light the room appears quite luxurious at first sight. It’s only a moment after entry that it becomes obvious it’s lacking almost everything any room should have if someone was going to live in it. The bed is only one example. There seems to be a low, velvet couch at one wall and a small, high table at another, but once the eye had a moment to realise what it is seeing those turn out to be nothing more than pictures on the wall.

Basically, the room is empty.

The soul only really realises that when it wonders why the boy king is sitting on the floor. The demon doesn’t seem bothered by the lack or furniture, though. He seems comfortable enough, and the soul that has never been downstairs can only guess that a cell in Heaven is still better than a throne room in Hell.

The demon is sitting in the centre of the room which is basically the only place where his wings don’t get in the way. The room is just a little too narrow, the ceiling a little too low for him to fully flex them should he want to.

He looks up when the door opens, and after a second of confusion during which the soul thinks his identity will be mistaken, the other’s face lights up.

“Jimmy!” he says, sounding almost pleasantly surprised. “You’re the last one I expected to see here!”

“How do you know it’s me?” Usually, Castiel keeps his vessel’s appearance even in Heaven, and that hasn’t changed since he declared himself a god. Jimmy has gotten used to seeing his own face and the angels have never mistaken him for one of them, but Sam is no angel, and Jimmy is pretty sure he didn’t see him in the crowd when he arrived; too distracted handing himself over to captivity. And kissing his brother.

Sam shrugs. “You’re very obviously not Cas.”

That’s good enough. Sam is not an angel, but he’s the boy king of Hell, and that has to count for something after all.

“What are you doing here?” Sam moves to stand, but Jimmy sits down with him instead. “Shouldn’t you be in paradise by now? I thought this was all over for you.”

Jimmy shrugs. He remembers the promise of paradise and saying No quite clearly, but Sam had other problems at that time, he supposes. He doesn’t know for sure, because with dying and making sure his daughter didn’t have to ruin her life by carrying an unbalanced angel around, he had had other worries than Sam’s troubles.

“Angels need their vessels’ souls to anchor them in their bodies. So wherever Cas goes, I go.”

“Yeah, I know they do. It sucks. But what about now? I thought you’d get to enjoy your afterlife when he doesn’t need you.”

“I actually do, usually.” It isn’t so bad, even, because Jimmy’s soul is pretty far under whenever Cas goes to earth and he can just pretend those times are bad dreams from which he once again wakes in paradise. Most of the time, he can even forget that the wife and daughter he lives with are just products of Heaven. “But, well.” He offers a vague grimace. “Things changed.” And what he means is ‘Cas changed’.

“I guess they did.” Sam nods and shifts a little. Only the quite rattle of the thin chain draws Jimmy’s attention to his hands and only now does he notice Sam is still wearing the shackles around his wrists. The chain is long and doesn’t hinder him too much, but the fact remains that he is chained in an empty cell in Heaven.

He probably knows a thing or two about change as well.

Jimmy knows a bit about his story, sure, but he doesn’t know the details. Sam had been in hell with Lucifer and Michael, then he was brought back, but without his soul. Jimmy remembers some about Castiel’s intentions to save him, but the actual trip into Hell had happened without him. There was no reason for the angel to drag his vessel down there.

In the end, Death saved Sam’s soul and Sam was okay until something happened and the memories of the cage destroyed him. Jimmy isn’t even vaguely aware of this or anything that happened after, even though he knows Castiel was present for some of it. Sometimes it almost feels as if Castiel has made an effort to keep him ignorant out of shame.

Jimmy doesn’t know much about that time in general, but he does know it was difficult for his angel. He wishes he had been able to talk to Cas during that time, but the angel had shut him out completely. And now…

Sam, he realises, is looking at him with his slanted black eyes. He also realises that he’s sitting two feet away from one of the most powerful demons ever and isn’t afraid, as he probably should be.

It’s just. Sam just seems so harmless.

Well, maybe not harmless; nice is more like it. Like he could be dangerous but chooses not to be out of consideration.

He’s not quite what Jimmy expected. Jimmy isn’t even sure _what_ he expected – he never knew the Winchesters that well – but it’s something darker, something more obviously evil. Not that he thinks Sam used to be evil, but he’s a demon now, the personification of sin. Hell corrupts and twists even good people, and Sam has to have done something to deserve going to Hell in the first place. Unless he did it to save the world once again; but somehow, Jimmy doesn’t believe that works more than once for every person.

Yet here he is, with black eyes and black wings, a prisoner in Heaven, looking a lot less frightening than the last time Jimmy has seen him, back when they were both alive.

There is a quite impressive bruise on his cheek where the angel hit him.

“I can’t imagine you came here just to say Hi,” he says, reminding Jimmy that he never answered his first question.

“I’ve been sent here,” he explains. “I’m supposed to keep an eye on you and see that you get everything you need.”

Sam laughs a surprised laugh at that and smiles, and for the first time Jimmy get the feeling that there is something ugly hidden beneath it. “That’s actually funny. Why you?”

“Castiel tru- Castiel used to trust me. And I’m not permanently stuck in my Heaven. That made me the obvious choice after _he_ decided not to leave the job to an angel. He didn’t think you’d react positively to their attention.”

Sam laughs at that, though it lacks humour and turns into a coughing fit in the end. Jimmy frowns, concerned, because Sam looks nothing but healthy to him. The fit passes soon enough, though.

“So, if I need to get out of here, can you arrange that for me?”

“Don’t be silly,” Jimmy says tiredly. He’s not happy about his new position as prison warden.

Sam suddenly turns very serious. “You’re Castiel’s vessel,” he says. “You said yourself he trusted you. Can’t you try to talk some sense into him? I don’t know how much you saw of what happened, but you know he’s changed. We can’t reach him anymore – not even Dean.”

It seems absurd that a god, or even an angel, should listen to a demon, yet Sam seems to think that Castiel should. Jimmy knows that they used to be friends once, but that was before Sam and Dean decided to both go to hell and take over.

He does, however, agree that what’s going on right now is not the right way to go.

“He wouldn’t have been forced to hold you hostage if you’d agreed to help him,” he says regardless, feeling the need to defend his angel. “He needs your help! You can’t expect him to come at your beck and call but turn away when _he_ needs _you_ for a change and then complain if he gets pissed.”

“He never even asked,” Sam tells him. Jimmy was worried how he would react to the words even as he said them, but the boy king doesn’t seem to be offended by the critique. “He just assumed, like you, that we’d turn him down, so the first thing he did was kidnap Dean and summon me here. He decided we’d betrayed him before we even had a chance to do so.”

“So you would have helped him if he asked?”

Sam hesitates just long enough for disappointment and anger to well up in Jimmy. “I guess we would have, considering what’s at stake,” the demon finally says. “But I can’t tell for sure. Dean might have denied it just on the grounds of Cas being the one who requested it.”

“There you have it.” Jimmy gets up and moves to lean against the wall. He doesn’t know why he feels so betrayed on Castiel’s behalf when he feels betrayed by Cas himself.

Sam follows his movements with his unnatural, black eyes, but makes no move to stand himself. It dawns on Jimmy that with the wings the low ceiling would make standing uncomfortable at best, but he pays no attention to the realisation, because Sam’s talking again.

“Cas betrayed us,” he says, his voice a little sharper than before. “He’s the reason we’ve become what we are now. You think after all we went through, either of us was keen on returning to Hell?”

“So he threw you down himself?” Jimmy asks doubtfully. “Going down had nothing at all to do with your own faults? With engaging in sexual acts with your own brother, perhaps?” He doesn’t even know where that last one came from. It’s just something that’s been rubbing him in entirely the wrong way since he saw them kiss, and not chastely either.

“Engage in sexual acts,” Sam repeats and snorts. “Quite a nice sounding euphemism for fucking. You sound like a priest.”

“And you sound like a demon.”

Sam bares his teeth in something a little too predatory to be a smile. “Shocking, isn’t it? But if you absolutely have to know, we started that afterwards. Being a demon changes your perception of morality.”

“I bet,” Jimmy mutters darkly. Louder he adds, “And yet you think he should listen to you.”

“No, Jimmy. I think he should listen to _you_.”

“Well, he won’t,” the human soul reluctantly admits. “He won’t even _hear_ me.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean Castiel isn’t there anymore.” Jimmy closes his eyes and suddenly doesn’t care he’s talking to a demon. He’s never talked about this with anyone before. “It’s… I see him. When he takes over. I always see him, for a second, in his real form.” He shudders, involuntarily, as the memory washes over him with both terror and unrivalled admiration. “You can’t imagine what it’s like.”

“I can actually,” Sam says, reminding Jimmy that he’s hosted an angel as well. Still, Jimmy doesn’t think Lucifer feels quite the same as his (once) pure and noble Castiel. “Go on.”

“He’s different now. Ever since he opened purgatory. He says he absorbed the souls inside but it looks more like they consumed _him_.” It’s not easy to find words to describe it; Jimmy has to resort to metaphors. “He used to be made of light, but now it’s like he’s entirely covered in shadows. And those shadows, they’re not Cas. Sometimes I see his light shine through – it almost feels like he’s reaching out to me and calling for help.” He shudders again, for different reasons this time. “Even if the Cas we knew could hear us beneath all that, he couldn’t do anything to help us. He can’t even help himself.”

Sam listens intensely but displays no sign of sympathy, just calculating interest. “So if we could get rid of those ‘shadows’, he’d be in control again?”

“I don’t think that’s going to work. I think they’ve merged too completely. It wasn’t a good picture to use.” Jimmy closes his eyes again and takes a shaking breath. He suddenly wonders if the New God who isn’t Castiel anymore is listening in to their conversation. There is no doubt that he can, just if he’s interested in them enough to bother.

“I guess it was good enough,” Sam says graciously.

“I just want you to understand, before you judge him, that it’s not Castiel who does all this. The Castiel you knew would never harm you – you know that, right?”

Sam just looks at him for a long moment, before shifting his attention to a piece of carpet. He doesn’t say anything.

Jimmy suspects demons just aren’t that big on forgiveness.

 

 

+*+*+

 

 

Jimmy doesn’t stay with Sam all the time. Every now and then the New God needs him to be his vessel on earth, and in between he often is allowed to return to his Heaven. And the nature of Heaven helps him to put all worries aside – even those about a nice angel turned evil god and a caged demon he has to return to.

It also makes his breaks seem very long, which helps to see his observance of Sam as a task on the side.

It doesn’t make it easier, though. Sam is nice and pleasant enough, but somehow that just makes it worse. He never blames Jimmy for his situation or asks him to help him escape. He never does anything that would get Jimmy in trouble, period, and he never attacks or even yells at him. In fact, he doesn’t act at all like Jimmy would expect a demon to act.

And so he successfully makes Jimmy feel horrible about himself every time he enters that cell and sees Sam sitting on the floor of that ridiculously elegant empty room.

It’s hard to tell how much time passes for Sam. Sometimes it looks like the demon hasn’t moved at all in the time Jimmy was gone, but other times he’s changed so much it’s frightening.

The first change Jimmy ever notices is the skin of Sam’s wrists; they turn red after a while and it gets worse until it look badly burned. He actually takes that observation to the New God, tells him what the shackles do to Sam. The New God only explains that Sam is a demon and the chains are holy, so of course they hurt him. The request to remove them since they are redundant isn’t even denied – it gets ignored, plain and simple.

Though it has to be painful, Sam never complains about it. Yet, stressed lines appear on his face and a haunted look in his eyes that worries Jimmy. Sam gets restless, shifting more, seemingly unable to find a position that’s comfortable. One day Jimmy comes in to find him crouching in the corner of his room, pressed against the wall, and stretching his wings out as far as he can. They still don’t unfold completely and when he notices Jimmy’s presence, Sam gives up with a sigh.

Jimmy thinks of long drives in a car without a chance to stretch his legs. It’s been so long since he experienced simple discomforts like that.

“I suppose your chambers in Hell have higher ceilings,” he says uneasily.

To his surprise, Sam shakes his head. “Not higher than this. But in Hell, I can summon the wings at will. This is the first time I’m stuck with them for so long. They’re not exactly practical unless you’re flying.”

Jimmy looks more closely at the wings. So far he has tried to ignore them, ridiculous at that seems. Somehow they seem like something a polite person doesn’t stare at, not to mention the fact that they make it damn impossible to ignore or forget Sam’s true nature.

Now he wants to look at them it almost takes effort, as if his eyes want to refuse taking in the sight. It drives him slightly crazy, but he looks closely anyway and sees strong, slender bones under fragile-looking black skin. Solid and real. It seems unbelievable that Sam can just make them appear and disappear as he needs them.

“How come you can’t put them away now?”

“They’re a stigma here.” Sam doesn’t say it like it’s obvious even though it is, and for that Jimmy is strangely grateful. “So everyone can see what I am – as if the black eyes weren’t enough.”

“I’ve never heard of a demon with wings before. Outside folklore, I mean.”

“Well,” Sam doesn’t look at him; the topic seemed to make him uncomfortable. “I’m special.”

 

 

*+*+*

 

 

The next time Jimmy sees him, Sam is lying on his back, his wings awkwardly cramped beneath him. He’s moving in unnatural, jerky motions, his back arched and his legs kicking at the rough carpet. It reminds Jimmy of a man having a seizure more than anything else.

When Sam doesn’t react to his voice, Jimmy runs out in search of someone who could help. He doesn’t find anyone – it seems like there’s no one in the world but him. Even the New God is nowhere to be found, and when Jimmy returns to the cell after running through empty corridors for what feels like hours, the door is locked and he can’t get inside.

The next thing he knows, he’s in his Heaven again. But this time it’s harder to forget that not everything is sunshine and roses.

When he next comes to see Sam, the door opens without hesitation and Sam is sitting on the floor as if nothing ever happened. Except the lines on his face are a little deeper and he’s sporting rug burns on his arms and elbows.

He’s also paler than before, but maybe he’s been pale for a while and Jimmy just didn’t notice it. He did, however, notice the dark rings around Sam’s eyes that seem to get darker every time he sees him.

When he asks Sam about that, the boy king only shrugs. “I’m a demon,” he says. “This is Heaven. It doesn’t mix well.”

“Is that what Dean meant when he said you wouldn’t last a year?” Actually, Jimmy doesn’t even know how long Sam has been here. He could tell how often he’s seen him, but that doesn’t mean anything in the end.

“Yes,” Sam confirms. “Cas is using it to put pressure on Dean.” Then he looks at the human soul directly for the first time that day and his black eyes resemble nothing so much as the eyes of a young dog. “Have you heard anything? About Dean?”

“No,” Jimmy has to admit. He shifts uncomfortably because he doesn’t like discussing Dean with his brother. Not after seeing what they do when they are alone. Or not alone at all. “But I know we would have heard if something had happened to him.” He doesn’t want to say, ‘He’s obviously doing well in his job because so far nothing has happened to _you_.’

But that, too, changes eventually.

 

 

+*+*+

 

 

The day it happens, Jimmy isn’t even told. He’s pulled out of his Heaven as usual and has made it halfway to the cell when he notices all the angels standing around, waiting. They don’t react to his presence, just stare in one direction. Motionless. Somehow, they remind Jimmy of birds.

It’s when he realises that they are all looking expectantly in the direction of Sam’s cell that he really starts to worry.

He doesn’t even know how he feels about Sam. The fact that he’s a demon and Jimmy used to be a good Christian is a bit of an obstacle that’s hard to overcome, even if he’s ignoring the incest thing. Something always feels a little off with Sam, no matter how peaceful and harmless he’s acting. There’s a sense of danger that’s just underneath the surface – but on the other hand, Jimmy never saw him do anything that would justify the mistrust, and in the end it’s almost impossible not to like the kid.

And now something is going on that he’s sure he isn’t going to like. Jimmy runs the last bit to the cell, but an angel holds him back before he reaches the door. It wears the form of a petite, elderly woman but there is no way he can get past her.

“Dean Winchester has been summoned to Heaven,” she explains. “He is to receive punishment for overstepping his boundaries and his brother has been summoned to the great hall to do his part.”

“Are you saying you’re going to torture him?” Jimmy fears he might be sounding slightly hysteric, but it’s hard not to be. Not when he can hear Sam now, yelling inside the cell; aggressive sounds that remind Jimmy of a frightened animal.

This isn’t going to end well.

This time, Sam doesn’t walk towards the hall as if he owned the place. This time he is dragged out kicking and screaming and none too gently. Jimmy can do nothing but follow along with the rest of the angels as four guards pull Sam towards the great hall by his chains.

Sam struggles all the way, yelling profanities Jimmy didn’t expect him to even know, and uses his wings to strike the angels around him until two of them grab them and hold them tight. The struggle visibly lessens afterwards, so Jimmy suspects that the wings are particularly sensitive and even the simple hold the angels have on them causes Sam pain.

He does look as if he’s in pain, in any case. But he also looks angry. Not scared, as Jimmy had suspected, but full of righteous fury.

Amazingly enough, Sam stops fighting his guards completely just before they reach the hall. They stop before the door, waiting for the New God to call for them, and Sam suddenly stands still, takes a few deep breaths and pulls himself together, his face carefully blank. When they are called inside Sam walks of his own accord, once again leading the procession; at that point Jimmy thinks he’s putting up a front for the New God, too proud to show any weakness.

No one stops the human soul from entering, so he does, even though he’s not sure he wants to see what happens next. Perhaps it’s the father in him, combined with Sam’s youth and the fact that he’s been placed in Jimmy’s care. Demon or not, he simply feels like he has to be there for the boy.

Perhaps, though, it’s also the man he used to be, the one who believed in the angels and still wants to see that belief justified even though he knows what cruelty and selfishness they are capable of. He still wants to go and see the proof that they are not actually going to torture a helpless kid. That Castiel won’t do it.

The same need also makes it nearly impossible to look.

The New God is sitting on his throne as always when he holds a gathering. He seems to enjoy it, this display of his superiority. Before him, at the foot of the few stairs leading up to the throne another angel is standing, waiting, looking down the hall with an expression of calm self-righteousness. Jimmy has seen him before, but he doesn’t remember his name.

When he follows the angel’s gaze he sees Dean Winchester at the other end of the hall. He, too, is in chains, and held tightly by two angels left and right. When Jimmy sees the tension of his body, like an animal ready to attack, he understands why.

Dean doesn’t notice Jimmy. He doesn’t notice anything except his brother when Sam enters the hall.

The boy king walks in calmly and stands facing his brother. They are far apart, almost the entire lengths of the hall, but seem to communicate with looks better than angels can with words. Dean is furious, very clearly ready to tear apart anyone who would try to hurt Sam, but Sam doesn’t seem concerned at all. He looks collected, almost relaxed, as if all this wasn’t more than a nuisance to him, and while Dean doesn’t exactly calm down, he seems to relax a little when he sees Sam, still in once piece and apparently not very bothered by this situation at all.

Jimmy understands then why Sam pulled himself together like that. He doesn’t even want to imagine how Dean would have reacted had he seen his brother but minutes before, struggling helplessly in the hold of his captors.

“The demon Dean Winchester has broken the agreement he made with me to ensure his brother’s safety,” the New God’s voice rings through the hall and all the angels that stand watching at the sidelines fall silent. “Not only has he failed to retrieve all of the weapons stolen by the traitor Balthazar, he has also with the intention to kill raised his blade against an angel who has sworn, and proven, loyalty to me. For this reason, it is Dameal’s right to administer the punishment for this trespass himself.”

Dameal’s expression doesn’t change as he steps closer to Sam and comes to stand before him. With calm, confident movements he takes hold of the demon’s short-sleeved, black shirt and rips it into pieces that fall to the floor. Then he fastens the chain between Sam’s wrists to a chain hanging from the incredibly high ceiling while two of the guards resume their hold on Sam’s wings that twitch as if they had a life of their own.

They are the only part of Sam that shows any sign of unwillingness.

Jimmy expected Dean to have something to say about that, but the other demon is silent; when Jimmy turns to look at him, Dean is watching his brother and the angel he tried to kill for whatever reason with a grim face and a stubbornly shut mouth.

“Dean,” the New God addresses him. “As by our agreement, your brother will receive the punishment in your stead. Since your attempt on his life failed, Dameal is forbidden to cause wounds that will maim Sam, and to keep you not too long from your mission, he agreed to be quick. Other than that, I left the choice of punishment to him. You can now, for your brother’s sake, beg for forgiveness and pray for Dameal’s undeserved mercy to be reflected in the level of suffering you willingly inflicted on this prince of Hell.”

“And you can go fuck yourself,” Sam very calmly says.

For a moment, the hall is silent. Jimmy hardly dares to breathe, and Dean, unexpectedly, doesn’t say anything at all. In the end, the New God says, “Very well. You had your chance,” and leaves Sam to the questionable mercy of the angel before him.

Jimmy doesn’t want to watch but he can’t look away. It doesn’t seem too bad, though, and he allows himself to feel careful relief when all Dameal does is lay his hand on Sam’s bare stomach. Jimmy sees the muscles twitch and Sam move back a little, but he doesn’t get far because of the chains and the angels holding him. His expression remains carefully blank and Jimmy holds his breath as he’s waiting for the angel to either start whatever it is he plans to do or withdraw his hand and speak of mercy.

For a long moment nothing happens. Dameal seems to be waiting for something, but Jimmy can’t tell what. Until he sees Sam twitch again, shifting in his restrains almost unwillingly. His breath is coming in short gasps now as if he was in pain, but Jimmy still needs a moment before he realised he actually _is_.

After that, it only takes a second for him to notice the smell of burned flesh.

He wants to say something, ask whatever is left of Castiel inside the New God to put a stop to this, but he can’t speak. No sound escapes him even though he tries.

Eventually, Sam gasps loudly and very obviously in pain. He bares his teeth and his face is white and covered in sweat, his eyes wide. A long groan escapes him. Finally, after what feels like hours, he screams.

Dameal listens to those screams for a long moment before he pulls back his hand. The chain forcing Sam’s hands above his head disappears as if it had never been there and when the angels holding his wings let him go, Sam falls to his knees and remains on the floor in a trembling, shivering heap, breathing hard.

“Learn your lesson,” is all the New God has to say about it. Jimmy finally overcomes his paralysis and turns around to look at Dean, but the demon is already being escorted outside by his guards and Jimmy never catches a glimpse of his face.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Understandably, Jimmy expects the skin of Sam’s stomach to sport a burn the shape of Dameal’s hand, much like the mark Castiel once left on the skin of Dean’s arm in the shape of Jimmy’s hand. He’s wrong, but it’s a while before he learns that.

Sam never get another shirt and thus remains naked from the waist up, but when Jimmy next goes to him he’s curled up on his knees, his arms wrapped around himself as best he can with his hands still chained, and his wings are folded close to his body like a shield. His forehead touches the ground and his hair falls down to hide his face. He doesn’t react to anything Jimmy says to him.

The next time he’s a little more upright, but the sickly pallor of his skin frightens Jimmy. Once again he has to think of Dean’s warning that his brother wouldn’t last a year in Heaven. He doesn’t even know how much time has passed since Sam was brought here, or if the time was as long or as short for Sam as it was for him.

This time, Sam is using his arms to shakily push himself into a sitting position, leaving his stomach unprotected. What Jimmy sees there isn’t a handprint, but an Enochian symbol he has never seen before. Its lines are blackened and the skin around them marked by angry read streaks as if it were poisonous, or rotting its way through Sam’s body. It’s obviously still very painful and Jimmy winches at the sight.

“I’m sorry,” he says, but Sam only looks at him as if he were speaking an unknown language.

Since he can’t think of anything else to say, Jimmy sits on the floor a few feet away from the demon and leans his back against the wall. Sam keeps looking at him like he expects something, but doesn’t say anything. He looks like he could badly use some sleep, even though Jimmy is pretty sure something like that doesn’t even exist in this place.

Eventually, Sam speaks. “Did you hear anything?” he asks, and Jimmy is shocked at the audible tremor in his voice. “About what happened with Dean and that angel?”

Jimmy shakes his head. “I don’t know any more than you do. Dean attacked Dameal and tried to kill him. I don’t know why.”

To his surprise, Sam laughs. It sounds strangely emotionless. “If Dean wants to kill an angel,” he says, “that angel is dead afterwards. He doesn’t ‘try’.”

“Well, apparently he did.”

“No. He didn’t. He’s not that stupid.”

“So you’re saying Dameal lied?”

“You say that as if it was outrageous to even suggest it.”

If Jimmy thinks about it, it really isn’t. After all, the hatred between angels and demons goes both ways and on top of that Jimmy knows that some angels are so loyal to Castiel and his cause that they take the Winchester’s attempt to stop him from absorbing purgatory very personal. Maybe this was all just a ploy for a chance to hurt the boy king.

The thought still doesn’t sit well with him.

“If he did, Castiel would have known about it.”

Sam shrugs, like he doesn’t think it would make a difference.

 

 

+*+*+

 

 

The next time Dean is ordered to the great hall, Jimmy doesn’t even notice until he enters Sam’s cell and finds it empty. Dread fills him the very same moment; he doesn’t for one second think that the angels simply let him go.

No one stops him from entering the hall, but after three steps it’s like he ran into an invisible wall and he can’t move on. He’s inside just far enough to see what’s going on, even though his vision is obscured by a couple of angels standing in his line of sight.

He can’t see Dean, for example, but he can see part of an angel he recognizes as Dean’s personal guard whenever he’s up here. Castiel he can’t see either, until he speaks and Jimmy realises he was looking in the wrong place: for once, the New God isn’t sitting on this throne but standing beside Sam at the bottom of the stairs.

Jimmy only knows Sam is there because he can see one wing behind the angel right in front of him.

“… no point in denying it,” Castiel’s voice is ringing through the hall just now. As always, it makes Jimmy shiver to hear his own voice like that, vibrating with power and yet strangely empty. “We know you have found more of the weapons than you handed over to us. You will tell us where the remaining ones are hidden.”

“Fuck you,” Dean replies, much to the shock of the surrounding angels, and much to Jimmy’s shock as well. He doesn’t even know what this is about, but he knows Sam will pay the price for whatever Dean did wrong and that Dean can’t possibly want that. “Your buddy Balthazar has hidden them damn well – that’s why I haven’t handed them in yet. The easiest way to find them would be simply to ask him – but, oh, I guess you didn’t think that far when you killed him, did you?”

Jimmy frowns, not understanding what that was about. But the New God ignores the open accusation and just says, “The hiding places are magically protected. I can feel the disturbance when the protection is broken. One for every weapon in that spot. Six protections broken – four weapons handed in.” He turns away and the angel in front of Jimmy moves a little, allowing him to see Sam.

Like last time, he’s hanging in chains from a ceiling so high it’s invisible, and his upper body is still naked. The symbol burned into this skin stands out like a stigma for all to see. His black eyes are fixed on Dean and ignore everyone else in the hall, including the God right beside him.

He doesn’t look good, but then he hasn’t looked good in a long time. What Dean must think when he sees his brother’s greyish skin and bloodshot eyes, Jimmy can only guess.

“You will get a chance to hand over the objects afterwards,” the New God says graciously. “This is a warning.” And when the other angel in Jimmy’s way steps aside, Jimmy can see the knife in Castiel’s hand.

It looks ordinary enough: a short, old knife with a worn handle and no markings that set it apart from every other old, ordinary knife. But there’s a curse coming from Dean’s direction and Sam goes pale when he sees it. Then he closes his eyes for a second, and when he opens them again they are set on his brother and as calm and collected as before.

“You recognize this, of course,” the New God says to Dean. “I believe it is hard, even for you, to forget the weapon you killed your brother with.”

Now it’s Jimmy’s turn to gasp, but no one pays attention to him. He becomes aware again of just how little he knows about the boy king and his second in command.

“I trust you know what this means?” the New God goes on, sounding disconcertingly like a school teacher. “Since this is the weapon that killed Sam, it is the only one that can permanently harm him.” As if to underline his words, he sets the knife to Sam’s upper arm and cuts his skin; Jimmy sees the blood that immediately runs down his arm and drops to the floor, soon after joined by the blood from a second cut a few inches above the shackles around Sam’s wrists.

 “These cuts are harmless, but they will never heal.” Jimmy doesn’t know if this is supposed to be a reminder for Dean or an explanation for everyone else. “Keep that in mind when you make your decision – if you continue to work against me, I will next cut off one of Sam’s ears. After that I will start with his fingers.” He crooks his head in the way Castiel always did – a gesture Jimmy never consciously did himself that looks alien on his body. “Where are the weapons, Dean?”

“Dean doesn’t have them,” Sam suddenly speaks up. “Do you really think he’d be so stupid to hide them from you if you have a hostage?”

“Yes, I do,” the New God says without batting an eye. “Because Dean has a history of not thinking things through.” After a second of silence he adds, as if in an odd and completely out of place attempt to comfort his prisoner, “He simply did not consider the consequences of disobeying me. It’s impossible to imagine he _wanted_ you to come to harm. And now be quiet – any further words and I will cut out your tongue.”

Sam looks like he’s going to ignore that threat and Jimmy’s heart sinks to his stomach. But before Sam can provoke the New God into doing something Jimmy really, really doesn’t want to see, Dean yells, “Okay, alright, I’ll tell you, you fucking asshole!”

“Dean!” Sam snaps and Jimmy swallows, but the New God merely smiles.

“I knew you would,” he says.

 

 

+*+*+

 

 

“Do I get this right? You _wanted_ him to maim you?” Jimmy asks, exasperated, when he takes care of Sam’s cuts later and Sam is still steaming with anger at his brother. “Because even I don’t believe he wouldn’t have done it.”

“Of course he would have done it,” Sam says exasperatedly. “He would have had to. But that’s not the point! Dean can’t just let every decision be influenced by his need to protect me. Do you have any idea how many messes he created just because of that? How can I trust him to do what he has to do when I always have to worry he’ll throw everything away just because someone pulls a gun on me?”

Jimmy doesn’t think this is a very good argument, or a very healthy world view. But maybe being a king in Hell changes the perspective. In any case, he would have appreciated if Sam didn’t move around so much, because it makes stitching him up very hard.

“So, you wouldn’t have tried to protect Dean is your roles were reversed?” he asks.

Sam glares at him in irritation. “Only if the circumstances allowed it,” he says. Jimmy doesn’t believe him for a second. But he says nothing and concentrates on his work instead.

The cuts are pretty deep, and even though an hour or so has passed, the bleeding hasn’t lessened in the least. Jimmy supposes the New God was right about the wounds not healing. It makes him feel slightly sick when he thinks about it, and somehow it doesn’t help that Sam doesn’t seem to care that he might be blessed with two bleeding wounds in his left arm for the rest of eternity.

Maybe Castiel will heal them when he’s back to normal again. Jimmy can only hope that’s actually possible.

“So, Dean killed you?” he asks, aiming for a conversational tone. He’s trying to distract Sam from the pain of the stitches, but he’s also trying to satisfy his own curiosity.

On closer observation, Sam doesn’t really seem to need distracting. But at least he’s forthcoming with information this time.

“Yes.”

“Yes? That’s it?”

“That’s all you asked.”

Sam is in a bad mood because of Dean’s decision not to let his nose get cut off. Jimmy can totally get behind that.

“You act like my daughter when she was five,” he says. “Why did he kill you? I can’t imagine he did it for fun, especially with both of you bound for Hell.”

“Actually, I wasn’t bound for Hell at that time. I don’t think Dean would have done it otherwise.” Sam’s voice is softer now, his anger apparently forgotten. When he realises that Jimmy is eager for an explanation, he offers it willingly. “I was insane,” he says with a shrug. “Completely out of touch with reality. My mind was trapped in the memories of Lucifer’s cage and there was no hope of me ever getting better. Dean didn’t want me to suffer any longer, so he killed me. Afterwards he slit his own throat.”

It sounds easy the way Sam tells it; just a statement of facts, no hint of the suffering and desperation that have driven a good man to murder and suicide. “Then why aren’t you in Heaven?”

“Because I wouldn’t go without Dean. I actually waited for him, outside my body, with a reaper basically tapping his foot in impatience.” He smiles at the memory thought it doesn’t seem all that funny to Jimmy. “But Dean committed fratricide and then suicide – two pretty big sins, and Castiel wasn’t so big on forgiveness at that time. He stuck to the old rules, ignored circumstances… later he showed up himself and made it very clear that there was nothing he could do for Dean’s soul. Examples, I guess. He had to strengthen his position as ruler of Heaven, after all, so exceptions were out of the question, and on top of that he was pretty pissed at Dean. So Dean stayed on earth as a ghost rather than move on to his final destination, and I stayed with him.”

It’s the longest speech Sam has given since getting here, and Jimmy is determined to make use of his talkative mood. “You were ghosts? Is that how you ended up in Hell as well? Because you turned into angry spirits and slaughtered random victims?”

“No. With me being the way I am, Hell had a certain… pull on me. Also, I was going insane again because it was my soul, not my mind that was damaged. So there was the choice of either sticking around and eventually losing it and being pulled down to Hell again, or going to Heaven without my brother.”

He says it like that was a no brainer. But Jimmy once turned down paradise for a potential eternity of being prisoner in his own body in order to protect his daughter, so he isn’t really one to judge Sam’s choice insane.

Though that insanity he mentioned might have had a certain influence on his decision. After all, being a vessel to a moderately nice angel isn’t the same as eternal torture in Hell.

“So when you went to Hell in the end…?”

“Dean came with me,” Sam confirms.

“And then you just became king?” Jimmy asks doubtfully.

Sam merely shrugs. “I was kind of predestined for it. Also, Dean and I, we’re only ruling a tiny little corner, and we pick our followers very carefully, since demons have a tendency to stab you in the back.” He says it with a smirk as if there’s a private joke in there that Jimmy doesn’t get.

“Still. It’s an unusual career choice for the good guys,” Jimmy says uncertainly.

“Just consider us good demons, then. We don’t even have racks in our territory. And we don’t possess people.”

“Even on earth?” Jimmy frowns, confused. He once heard that Sam and Dean Winchester appeared to someone in their old shapes, but short of them possessing their own corpses, he doesn’t see how that would work. “How is that possible?”

“Demons are, in the end, nothing but ghosts,” Sam explains. “Depending on the ghost, they sometimes are pretty damn material as well. Especially if they don’t know they’re dead. We’re merely copying the method.”

“So you would pass for living people on earth?” That does sound a little unlikely now.

“Mostly.”

Jimmy has a lot more questions about this but Sam seems distracted, and he realises that this conversation is over. Still, it served to make him like this demon a little more.

Or rather, to make him feel less bad about liking him anyway. Disliking Sam somehow was never on the menu, even though he tried.

 

 

*+*+*

 

 

Neither of them knows it at the time, but right after Dean’s second visit would be the last significant conversation Jimmy has with Sam. Afterwards, he gets summoned to the New God and spends an indefinable amount of days as his vessel on earth. He doesn’t know what happens in that time – as usual, the New God keeps Jimmy’s own consciousness far under and the next thing he is aware of is being back in his Heaven and for all he knows no time has passed at all.

Time doesn’t matter there, so it takes a while before he begins to wonder why he hasn’t been summoned to Sam for so long. Usually, he’s pulled back out of his own paradise automatically in more or less regular intervals, but this time nothing happens for so long Jimmy actually finds himself beginning to worry.

In his Heaven, it is hard to remember that Sam even exists. The place is designed to keep away all worries. But a nagging voice at the back of his mind won’t leave him alone; a kind of expectation that is never fulfilled.

By the time he finally is called back, Jimmy appears in the usual spot with a feeling of dread.

The feeling is justified. The New God, he learns from an angel coming to pick him up, has left the building – in the literal rather than the figurative sense. Castiel is busy somewhere, doing something. He obviously isn’t on earth, since he doesn’t need his vessel, but he’s caught up in some serious matters and can’t take care of his prisoner anymore. Therefore, the responsibility for Sam has been transferred to Dameal.

Jimmy feels sick when he hears that, though the angel who tells him doesn’t seem to think much of it. In the time since Dameal burned his sigil into Sam’s skin, Jimmy learned a bit more about him. He knows this is one of the angels who used to follow Michael and later Raphael and converted to Castiel’s side out of fear rather than loyalty. He also knows that he hates demons with a passion and hates Sam more than anything because he averted the apocalypse and is responsible for Michael ending up in Lucifer’s cage.

For a moment Jimmy wonders if Castiel wants to get rid of this one for good, because he keeps giving him opportunities to do things to Sam Dean will kill him for.

Apparently, Dameal was not of the opinion that Jimmy was needed until now. The human soul dreads what state Sam might be in when he finally get to see him. He’s pretty sure the New God would not appreciate his hostage dying on them, but short of that, anything is possible.

Jimmy wants to get to Sam’s cell, but he’s taken to the great hall instead. It confuses him only until he is led to the throne, where the angel accompanying him steps away to take care of other business he has.

The throne is empty, as expected. There are some other angels present, doing whatever they do in this place whenever Castiel isn’t holding court. They don’t pay attention to Jimmy and Jimmy isn’t paying attention to them; his attention is immediately taken by the chains hanging down from the impossibly high ceiling. The ones that are never there if they aren’t needed.

He finds Sam at the end of them. He’s kneeling on the ground beside the pedestal of the throne because the chains don’t leave him another choice. His hands are no longer bound loosely in front of his body but tightly, wrist to elbow, on his back, forcing him to bend over. And his wings…

His wings have been tied with iron clips that are fastened around the bones and pierce the black, leathery skin between them. These clips are also attached to chains and hold the wings completely unfurled and pulled upwards in a way that somehow reminds Jimmy of a pinned butterfly on display. His stomach turns when he remembers how sensitive they are, flinching away from even the lightest of touches.

“He nearly killed two angels before they managed to restrain him,” the angel that accompanied Jimmy said, not without grudging respect, before he left. Jimmy can well imagine Sam doing that.

Now Sam is still, kneeling with his head bend and his face hidden by his hair. Jimmy’s heart races when he runs over to him.

Absurdly, he feels the need to apologize.

Only after a second does Jimmy realise that Sam also is naked, adding further to the humiliation of being put on display like this. The only things he’s wearing are the chains and the bandages around the stitched wounds in his arm. They’re soaked with blood now – fresh blood, even days or however long it was after receiving the wounds.

Jimmy knows he’s here because he’s supposed to do something for Sam, but he can’t for the figurative life of him imagine what.

Sam flinches every so slightly when Jimmy touches him, but that’s all the reaction he gets out of the demon before he gently places his hands under his chin and lifts his head to he can look at his face.

As expected, Sam is conscious, because unconsciousness exists in this place just as little as sleep does. More small mercies that are taken from Sam – though Jimmy doesn’t even know if he sleeps in Hell.

He’s pale – paler than he was before, though Jimmy hardly thought that possible. Dark, bruised looking rings circle his eyes and his colourless lips are flecked with dried blood. Even his black eyes seem dull as he blinks at Jimmy.

“Hey,” he breathes.

It’s not quite the greeting Jimmy expected. In fact, he didn’t expect any greeting at all. And he doesn’t know what to say in return, because ‘How are you?’ seems to be a pretty silly question at the moment.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asks instead, and to his surprise, Sam answers immediately, as if he’d just waited for someone to finally offer.

“Water,” he whispers roughly.

Water it is, then. Jimmy carefully lets Sam’s head sink down again and stands, looking around. Of course, no water basin randomly opens up to offer him a cup. In fact, he doesn’t remember ever having seen water before in this place. No one actually ever needs it here.

In his own Heaven, he’d know where to get water. The water tab in the kitchen, for example. But it’s not like he can go there by choice, and even if he could, he doesn’t know it he could take anything out of it but himself.

So he leaves Sam, hard as it is, and goes searching. The angels he asks only look at him as if he had a second head growing out of his chest and obviously don’t know what to make of the question. Jimmy leaves the great hall and runs around outside, but he only gets lost in the corridors and always ends up back in front of he hall. Even Sam’s cell seems to be gone. Maybe it is.

There’s nothing he can do except return to Sam and tell him as much.

“It’s not like you can die of thirst here,” he tries to offer as consolation.

“No,” Sam croaks. “But I can feel like it.”

Jimmy winces. So much for comfort.

He does his best to fight down his own despair. This isn’t the Heaven he always believed in. And these aren’t the angels he sacrificed his humanity for.

What he can do for Sam is change the dressing of his wounds. The next bandages will be soaked soon enough, too, but with the stitches the cuts aren’t bleeding as badly as they did before and at least the bandages will keep the blood from running down Sam’s body and tickling him on top of everything else.

Unfortunately, due to the way his arms are bound, getting the old bandages off and applying new ones is awkward and inevitably causes Sam more pain.

In the end, Jimmy sits and keeps him company, trying to distract him as much as he can. Then, one second to the next, he’s standing in his yard watering the flowers and watching four-years-old Claire run about playing with the doll she got for her birthday.

 

 

+*+*+

 

 

After that, things go from bad to worse so quickly Jimmy can hardly keep up. He’s taken to Sam only every once in a while, and every time Sam seems to be weaker. Once, Jimmy can only watch helplessly as Sam is once again thrown around by some kind of seizure – just like he has seen before, in the cell. Only this time, Sam is bound tightly and his wings are pierced, and he’s inevitably causing himself even more pain.

The next time Jimmy sees him he’s not seizing, but he also doesn’t speak and sneers at the human when he tries to change the bandages that are once more soaked with blood. Another day, he’s fighting his bonds regardless of the pain he causes himself, his eyes wild but unseeing as he calls out in a language Jimmy doesn’t understand. One of the words sounds like “Dean”. A couple of angels stand by and watch, and Jimmy realises with a sinking feeling that Sam has finally snapped under the pressure of his captivity and the alienness of his place.

However, one day later Sam is calm again, recognizing him and talking coherently. Still, there is something in the way his eyes won’t quite focus that tells Jimmy that his sanity isn’t going to last.

All this is taking its toll on him. He has been here for a long time, without sleep or any kind of comfort, chained naked in a public spot to further humiliate him, in a place that makes him sick. Even without the torture – Jimmy really doesn’t have it in him anymore to call it anything else – any normal person would have snapped long ago. In the face of all the things he’s been put through since coming here, Jimmy couldn’t help admiring this man, demon or not. It’s painful, now, to watch him break.

Then the time comes when Dean is summoned again. Castiel is back and in charge, with Dameal standing somewhere in the background, one eye on his bound victim, the other on his God. Jimmy arrives in the hall before Dean does, and he tries to plead with Castiel the moment he sees him. He wants his angel to put an end to this, to put Sam back in his cell, where he’s as safe as a demon can be in Heaven. But the New God ignores his pleas. All this actually happens for a reason, he tells his vessel, generous as he is these days. Dean is taking his sweet time with his task, stalling as an act of rebellion, the New God says. Making his brother suffer constantly shall inspire him to hurry. Regardless Dean is still taking his time showing up here and he also missed to report back to the angels about his progress. It is time, now, to remind him what is at stake.

Jimmy doesn’t know what that will come down to, but he has seen Sam’s earlier punishments. And he doesn’t know, weakened as he already is, how Sam can possibly handle another permanent injury.

So he summons all his courage and steps up to the throne, in front of all the angels and a demon who might not even hear. “Please,” he says, bowing his head but keeping his eyes on Castiel’s face. His own face. “Have mercy. He’s just a boy.”

“He is a demon and far older than you can imagine,” the New God replies. “Hell created him.”

“He’s a child!” Jimmy snaps. “He didn’t have thirty years on earth! And he doesn’t deserve this.”

“Do not question my judgement!” The New God shoots back, his tone calm but his voice like thunder. “And do not try my patience.”

The last bit is added almost as an afterthought, but Jimmy senses, instinctively, that it’s time to retreat. Castiel doesn’t take well to critique these days. He sees it as betrayal, and traitors can hope for no mercy.

The New God probably won’t destroy him, since he needs him as a vessel. But then, maybe he will. Maybe he’ll just take another vessel, one that’s female and so much younger…

It was, perhaps, the parental instincts in Jimmy that made him step up there. It’s the father in him that makes him step down.

He tries to get closer to Sam, see if he’s even aware of what’s going on around him, but angels block his way and Jimmy is almost certain they do it on purpose.

The dread nearly kills him, figuratively speaking, with every second the doors remain closed and Dean refrains from entering. Eventually, even the angels begin to get restless. When finally the doors open Jimmy flinches, but it’s only an angel in a black suit who runs up the steps to the New God and whispers something in his ear.

If the New God is surprised by whatever he hears, he doesn’t show it. He doesn’t even blink but calmly stands and announces, “The demon Dean Winchester is in hiding. He has wilfully ignored a direct order to appear here. The punishment of his brother, the boy king, will be doubled and executed in his absence. Make sure the demons learn of it.”

Jimmy nearly wails in desperation when he hears the words. When two angels take his arms and usher him out of the hall before the show starts, he is almost glad.

 

 

*+*+*

 

 

The next time Jimmy sees Sam, the boy is in a pitiful state. He’s covered in bruises that already look old, which either means he heals quickly even in Heaven or that he hung here, on his own, for a long time.

The injuries, by and large, look superficial and upon fleeting observation, Jimmy can’t find anything worse. It’s not reassuring. There are a hundred things the angels could have done to Sam that are not obvious on first sight.

As always, Sam is conscious, but it takes awhile for his eyes to focus on Jimmy. His lips are once again dry and flecked with blood.

“Dean…” Sam groans, softly. Jimmy’s heart sinks and he sets to tell the kid that he’s not Dean when Sam starts again and manages, “Something’s wrong with him.”

Jimmy thought about that as well, and judging by what he saw of Dean since this whole mess started, he believes Sam might be right. “He would have come if he could,” he says.

“So he can’t,” Sam agrees. “Something’s wrong. He’s in trouble.” He looks at Jimmy and for the first time in ages, his black eyes are clear again. “You have to help me get out of here.”


	3. Chapter 3

Dean is scary. The demon called Asmodeus always knew that, and not only because he saw him with a sniper rifle in his hands when they were both still alive. He’s scary because he is a demon with a temper who will stop for nothing to ensure his brother’s safety. And nothing means _nothing_ in this case. Asmodeus isn’t usually scared of him, but that’s only because he’s not stupid enough to threaten his brother.

Not that he could, even if he wanted to. Which he doesn’t. In fact, he’d tear out his own leg for that guy if he had to – even if he wouldn’t get it back. But that’s not the point. The point is that Dean is pretty single-minded when it comes to his brother, and even those not hurting him have to jump out of the way if they don’t want to be run over.

And now Dean’s brother is being held hostage by a half-crazy angel-turned-God, surrounded by the natural enemies of all demons and absolutely out of Dean’s reach. Since this started, his scariness has reached formerly unimaginable heights.

Now, generally Dean isn’t so bad as a leader. Even pissed to all Hell – literally – he doesn’t randomly tear apart his underlings or go and find a poor soul on the rack to take his anger out on. Still, it’s not a good idea to get on his nerves when he is like this, because Dean hasn’t been the most well-balanced guy even before he was a demon, and he’s always armed.

Ever since Sam got taken, it’s dangerous to even breathe in Dean’s presence. Fortunately, his loyal subjects don’t have to breathe, even though most of them still do so out of habit.

All of them, in fact. Because they are, actually, _Sam’s_ loyal subjects when their beloved boy king has the grace of being present and not held hostage elsewhere, and Sam strongly encourages breathing.

It reminds them that they are still human at heart.

This demon was there from the very beginning of this particular disaster and somehow managed, through years of experience in surviving Hell, to be completely ignored by everyone important through all of it. Admittedly that wasn’t too hard since everyone important would be Sam and Dean, and both of them were far too preoccupied with being worried about the respective other to pay attention to anyone else.

Asmodeus remembers even the moment Dean was send topside by his brother on some important mission or other, with hardly two words and a gesture. He’s been sitting with Sam at the time, talking about nothing important at all, when Dean announced he would leave now and Sam merely acknowledged the information.

Then Dean didn’t return. Sam was just beginning to get worried when they received the message that he had been taken by Heaven and Sam was to meet with an angel near their gate for further instructions. That was actually the word they used: further instructions, as if they had any right to tell the boy king of Hell what to do.

Asmodeus had bristled a little at the wording. Sam had bristled a lot because the demon they’d used to pass on the message was badly mangled and had done nothing to deserve such treatment except being associated with the wrong people. Sam hasn’t saved him from the rack to have the humanity tortured out of him by the fucking angels, he’d cursed, but altogether he had remained calm, thoughtful even. He hadn’t mentioned Dean once, which was a little frightening to everyone around him but only meant there was nothing to say on the matter.

There was never any doubt that Sam would follow the summoning where his brother was concerned.

Some of the newer members of their happy little off-the-rack family complained behind closed doors that Sam shouldn’t go, that he is more important to them than Dean. The older, more experienced ones strongly discouraged mentioning anything like that to their leader because in the end, Dean is so much more important to Sam than they are.

The time Sam was supposed to meet the angels was given in surface hours. It left their leader with plenty of time to give orders that felt to many like he was sorting his business before going off to die. Most likely in a hopeless battle.

The orders are simple. Their corner of hell is small, though growing. It’s not located in a deep circle of hell but close to the surface, and Sam is tolerating no racks and mindless torture in it. Regardless, not every soul deserves their protection simply by being within their borders. Those who have lost all humanity without hope of ever restoring it and revel in their sadistic urges have no place here, and they can be lucky if it’s not Sam himself who finds them. His followers merely drive those demons away, usually leaving no desire to ever return. Sam is the only one who can destroy them with ease.

They not only keep their territory clean but also work on expanding it. Many souls on the racks surrounding them can still be saved and no one here likes to listen to their screams without doing something about them. It does help that Sam’s powers keep the sound out, but that only works within a certain radius.

So expansion it is. If only to have some silence. Asmodeus in particular doesn’t see it quite that selfishly, but he knows a lot of the others do. Sam knows it as well. There are varying levels of trust being handed out around here.

But right now, all expansion has been put on hold. _Everything_ has been put on hold. Sam ordered them to stay within the territory. To defend the borders but not do anything beyond that. He appointed temporary leaders in charge of the defence lines – the usual suspects, the ones who earned his trust – and told them they are to remain passive until he or Dean returns to take over.

Then he left. He refused to take anyone along, but those who followed him to the gate caught glimpses of Sam talking to two heavenly assholes in suits before disappearing with them.

Not long after, a small group of demons with no personal ties to the boy king got the idea the boss being gone would be a good time to take over. They did not expect Sam to have so many followers who are actually loyal. Admittedly, Hell is a rough school to go through and lesson number one is ‘To avoid backstabbing, stab first’. (They have the absolute expert on that in their inner circle, after all.) Unlearning that takes time, but these ones won’t have the chance anymore. Someone will have to tell Sam when he returns, though Asmodeus is pretty sure he’ll understand.

 _If_ he ever returns. There is always that.

Dean does come back, not along after Sam left. He’s steaming. He’s yelling a lot. He’s pissed at everyone and everything for allowing his brother to go and save his ass. Likely, he’s mostly pissed at himself for getting captured and get put in a position where he needed saving in the first place. Smart people stay away from him at that time.

Reports still have to be made, and pity those who have to make them. Unfortunately, Asmodeus is one of them, being in charge of the border to the area most swarming with asshole-demons on this level. Fortunately, he can tell Dean something that re-directs his anger.

A demon called Tim has been trying to expand his own territory for a while and naturally he got wind that both Sam and Dean had left the nest for a while. So he sent his lackeys to attack, and they bounced off the border again and again. It was not really a threat – and seriously, what can be expected of someone who thinks ‘Tim’ is a cool name for a demon? – but it was annoying and they could never take their eyes off the little fuckers.

Now all’s quiet on that front again. Tim will need a while to restock his army and Dean got a bit of anger management out of it.

It wasn’t even a waste of time because it was necessary and because time passes faster here than on earth, which allows Dean to stray from the mission given to him by his old friend Castiel ever so slightly every now and then. Still using time for mundane things like slaughter is not something he _wants_ to do.

He wants to get his brother back. And if possible hurt some angels in the progress.

Then the time comes he does get to hurt an angel, and naturally that doesn’t make anything better. Asmodeus is there, though, when it happens, and he’s of the opinion that the attack was more than justified.

Especially since it saved him from being toasted like Melanie only seconds before him.

Melanie was a rather young demon who was probably more human than anyone else who runs around below the surface, including Asmodeus himself. Sam, too. And Dean goes without saying. When it comes to existence in Hell, Mel was pretty damn lucky, even though in life she kind of drew the short straw – if the short straw meant a nice but short life and a one-way-ticket to Hell due to absolutely no fault of her own.

Apparently, Mel’s mother was a loving woman, but sadly she had more than one child she loved and sold Mel’s soul to a demon while she was pregnant in order to save her firstborn son. The contract said the demon wouldn’t get the soul before the girl died, no matter how long that took. Unfortunately, it didn’t forbid him to throw a car on her.

So she ended up in Hell by the time she was twenty-four. On the rack. Ironically, this was where her luck set in. Due to her not having committed any unforgivable sins in life, the demon wasn’t allowed to pull her under very deep, and she was being tortured (lightly, in comparison) close to the surface, where time didn’t move quite as fast as deeper below. Sam happened to find her within days of her arrival, vaporized her demon and freed her. That was almost ten years ago, in Asmodeus’ personal perception, and she quickly proved herself as a clever, compassionate and loyal alley to Sam. He trusted her enough to pair her with Lily for protecting the gate, and Dean trusted her enough to take her along when he went on the task presented to him by Castiel.

And then some asshole-angel comes and destroys her in a second because he’s of the opinion Dean should better work alone since demons can’t be trusted anyway. She’s gone before anyone realises what happened. To Asmodeus’ incredible luck, Dean has a quick mind when it comes to danger and good reflexes Asmodeus himself never quite managed to achieve to this extent. He attacks the angel before he can hurt anyone else and doubtlessly would have killed him if he didn’t have to keep his brother’s safety in mind. As it is, Dean leaves it with a warning.

The angels react with a warning of their own. No one knows what to expect when Dean is summoned to Heaven, and no one but him gets to find out. Asmodeus is there when he returns, though, and he can guess.

Dean is raging, absolutely furious. “He screamed,” he hisses through grinded teeth. “They made him scream!”

Asmodeus winches, knowing what that means.

The furniture of the small hall has to die that day. Afterwards Dean leaves again, barking at everyone to “stay and protect the fucking place”. His eyes are flashing black as he runs toward the devil’s gate.

Lily, charged with keeping it safely in their hands, looks after him, then back at Asmodeus. Dean never appointed a replacement for Mel in order to help her but she’s capable of independent thinking and known best who she can work with anyway. She’s going to make her pick when she does.

Her eyes are black. They almost always are, as if she can’t be bothered to keep up appearances. Or wants to flash a warning flag. Or maybe she just thinks it suit her mood. Fact is, Asmodeus doesn’t really get Lily. She’s too quiet, generally too pessimistic and cynical. Sam is the only one who can really connect with her. He got her off the rack, and for a very long time he was the only one she would talk to.

Apparently she got along well with Melanie, though. Considering that, it’s no surprise she’s recently returned to her general aura of joylessness.

Admittedly, there isn’t a lot of fun going on right now.

It’s not just the worry about Sam. It’s also the worry about themselves. They need Sam and Dean to keep them together, but also to protect them from the much more evil demons who constantly try to take control of the devil’s gate. It doesn’t help that this one used to be easily accessible and one of the most frequented by demons trying to go topside for some fun and mayhem.

On of the first rules Sam established when they set up permanent camp before it was that no demon gets through who can’t maintain their own form on earth and has to possess someone else. It didn’t make him popular even with some of those already following him because not all of them are fresh off the rack. There are old demons among them, ones that don’t have an inch of humanity left but have gained something else in its place over the course of centuries. They are the ones who are loyal to Sam because they believe in him and have been waiting for him since before he was born. He is, in the end, their prophesised messiah.

Which means they expect him to bring them paradise, not forbid them to move out of Hell at all. But Sam never moved one step backwards and the few demons who tried to illegally smoke outside dearly regretted it.

Sam never wanted to be anyone’s messiah anyway.

Asmodeus doesn’t mind the rule. He’s as human looking as they come, except for the black eyes none of them are able to hide on earth. Not even Dean. Asmodeus, like Lily, usually keeps them even in Hell, but unlike her he’s doing it simply because it looks so much cooler.

Now Lily looks over to him with her own black eyes and says, “Andy.”

“It’s Asmodeus,” he protests. And he’d swear she only turned her eyes back to normal so he can see her roll them.

“You’re name’s Andy,” she insists. “Fucking deal with it.”

“Andy’s a stupid name for a demon.” They’ve had this discussion before. Actually, he had the discussion with pretty much everyone. Some of them he was able to convince that as demons they have a reputation to uphold and managed to make them change their names as well.

He wishes he could have this conversation with Tim.

Besides, he’s pretty sure Azazel-the-asshole-demon-who-damns-you-to-Hell-as-a-baby wasn’t actually called Azazel either. He was probably called Bob.

Or Steve.

Now, Ansem was a lucky one. Ansem is a name no one has to be ashamed of if they’ve got back eyes and an ego, but Ansem also is a psychopathic asshole and Sam never even tried to save him.

Andy doesn’t miss him at all. Fucking psycho-freak.

There are others who got fucked over by destiny and still didn’t make it here because of decisions they made freely and character faults that were there even without any demonic influence. Lily just got fucked over and Asmodeus doesn’t deny that she deserved to be freed, but that doesn’t mean he necessarily likes her.

Even though he has to admit she’s pretty hot. Unfortunately, she’s also not interested and thinks he’s a bit of a loser.

“What if Dean doesn’t come back?” she asks, in the straight forward way she has. Asmodeus gulps a little, because it’s not something he likes to think about.

“Let’s discuss that when we have to,” he therefore suggests.

“Oh, I just knew you’d say that!”

“What’s the point in planning for things that haven’t happened yet?”

“Not being caught by surprise and overrun by our enemies before we had time to figure out what to do without a leader, for one!” she snaps.

“So? You think we should just appoint a new one? Like, you?”

“Don’t be an idiot. But it would have been great if Dean had set the hirachy in order before fucking off. We need some kind of structure so we won’t fight over each and every decision.”

“You’re pretty quick to bury Dean. And Sam. Do you really think they won’t came back? They are more badass than all of Heaven put together.” And that’s true all the way, even though Asmodeus can’t forget the look on Dean’s face when he told them the angels made Sam scream.

“Meg, Crowley and all the others must know we’re on our own,” Lily reminds him. “They won’t miss this chance.”

She has a point. Asmodeus hates that. He starts walking towards the exit of the fortress and Lily follows him.

“So, you have someone in mind to take over as the second in command of our second in command?” he asks after he accepted he won’t get rid of her.

“There already is one,” Lily reminds him.

Asmodeus freezes, then snorts. “Yeah, Dean is just going to _love_ that.”

“Dean isn’t here. That’s the point.”

“He’ll come back.”

“As will Sam. And Sam is the one who appointed him in the first place.”

Though no one knows exactly why and Dean is spitting gall whenever the guy is near. Sometimes, their leader’s decisions are hard to analyse. So, yeah, that guy is smart and good at giving orders as well as following them. He’s been something like Sam’s personal bodyguard ever since Sam got him off the rack after a comparatively long time. And so far he’s given him no reason not to trust him.

Except everyone, most of all Dean, is constantly expecting him to go and stab Sam in the back the moment he sees his chance. He’s proven himself to be the type.

“Well…” Asmodeus doesn’t like the thought because he thinks the guy is an asshat who’ll sell them out as soon as it seems convenient, but he doesn’t really have an argument beyond that. “Do you even know where he is? I haven’t seen him in ages.”

“Dean banned him from the fortress as soon as Sam was gone.” Lily pauses, then she sighs. “Someone should probably tell him it’s safe to come back now.”

 

 

*+*+*

 

 

Tim tries another attack much too soon after the last one. Much too soon for _him_ – his pitiful little advance guard is scattered to the wind within an hour, and those who aren’t have been send down to the deeper layers of Hell where they’ll need centuries to fight their way back up and probably won’t remember they ever served a demon called Tim when they do.

Time moves faster the deeper the circle, so up here it probably won’t be centuries. Just five or six decades.

The demon who has a hard time convincing anyone to call him anything other than Andy isn’t terribly worried about them at the moment.

He’s more worried about Tim. Well, not about Tim as such, but about the forces that control Tim. Because Tim is serving one of the higher demon lords that seek control of the devil’s gate, and the fact that he attacked before he was ready proves that those are putting a lot of pressure on their lackeys to seize the moment.

Asmodeus and the others have never felt how much they depend on the boy king for protection as strongly as they do now.

Fortunately, Dean comes back only days after the attack. Even better, he found some of the weapons Castiel send him out to search, and even though he already handed some over to Heaven, he managed to keep two that were small enough to hide in his pocket.

One of them is a whistle made of the bones of seven saints-turned-heretics that Sam and Dean had been searching for even before Castiel knew it had been stolen. It’s a very useful thing to have for someone who’s constantly attacked by armies of demons. Dean tests it by making a little trip to Tim’s hideout. He comes back only hours later splattered with blood and wearing a wide but very grim smile on his face. For the first time he radiates something like optimism, as if he had a plan.

He loses the smile the next time he is summoned to Heaven, and when he comes back he gets the weapons he kept and takes them topside without a word to hand them over to an angel waiting there for him. Asmodeus can imagine what happened in Heaven.

Well, actually he can’t, but he can imagine enough to know that he doesn’t really want to.

He wants to know how Sam is doing. They all do. But Dean is angry beyond words, snapping and yelling at everyone nearby, and no one dares to mention his brother to him. His behaviour is telling enough. He’s worried out of his mind and blaming himself for what happened to Sam. It is evident in the way he goes about spitting accusations at everyone but himself.

For all Sam’s sensitivity, Dean is generally much easier to read.

Eventually, Dean locks himself into the chambers he shares with Sam, doubtlessly to quietly break down for a moment. On his own. Because he won’t let anyone else get that close, and Sam isn’t here.

Asmodeus stands before the closed door, staring at it for a long time. The door is rarely closed, and that it’s locked is even rarer. He knows he isn’t the only one who ever walked in on Sam and Dean rocking against each other under the sheets or above them, only to be met by a smirk from Dean and the order to wait until they are done unless it’s something really fucking important.

They aren’t the only ones Asmodeus walked in on either, nor were they the only ones to ever walked in on him and whoever he was with at the moment. Back in the day, when he was alive, he probably would have revelled in the outrageousness of it all. Here in Hell… well, Hell has different morals, and their little kingdom’s perception on sexuality is considered pretty lame compared to the rest of it – if only because no one is ever tied to a table and pierced with sharp objects while being fucked.

Asmodeus shudders at the thought. He was spared that particular torture before he was freed, but he knows many of his companions weren’t.

Once a group of low ranking demons did just that: They fond a hapless victim, pinned her down and had their way with her while she was screaming. They were new and didn’t get the rules. Didn’t even try to silence her.

It was Dean who found them. Oops.

Asmodeus doesn’t know if Sam ever even learned about it. Probably – he likes to know what happens in this kingdom he never wanted but feels responsible for none-the-less. On the other hand, Dean likes to protect him from things he considers… triggering.

The demon shudders once more. The only good thing about Sam’s absence is that his seizures and flashbacks and episodes of insanity no longer have an influence on the general environment.

Sam’s fits are the only time that the door to their lord’s chambers is ever locked – and even that only if everyone is lucky and Dean is with Sam at that time, not to mention them being anywhere near their chambers. Since it sometimes hits Sam far from here, with no protection from prying eyes, Asmodeus once got to see Dean try to reach his brother and calm him down with touches and words. He has never seen something so gentle, or so desperate.

He almost felt ashamed for watching; an entirely unfamiliar emotion. In the end he had to retreat hastily because something unpleasant shot out of the ground and tried to tear him apart.

Now everything is quiet on the other side of that door. In a while Dean will come out and get back to business and there will be no indication what he did in that room. He’ll do his job, find those weapons, get back his brother. And then he’ll tear Castiel a new one. Or thirty.

If Castiel is very lucky.

 

 

+*+*+

 

 

General rule has it that Dean being summoned to Heaven is never a good thing. The angels never call him up to say “Good job, here you have you brother to take home!” Actually, Asmodeus is pretty convinced they are never going to give Sam back. They’ll use Dean until he’s done all he can for them and then kill them both. It’s what angels do to demons. They’re not friends by nature.

Dean must have had similar thoughts. He’s a suspicious bastard. Maybe he even has a plan. If so, Asmodues hopes it doesn’t involve the weapons he tried to keep for himself, because that kind of backfired.

Maybe Dean’s just too busy keeping Sam alive and unmaimed to plan very far ahead. Asmodues doesn’t know. He’d ask, but Dean isn’t exactly talkative even if he’s actually present for a change.

He’s a bit of a sucky leader these days. Too single-minded. A worried Dean is something of an impatient asshole.

But it’s still better with him that without him. They all feel that when one day Dean leaves and doesn’t come back.

He’s been working himself to the ground since Sam handed himself over to the angels for him, and after his latest visit in Heaven it only got worse. Asmodeus actually dared approach him and ask to be taken along on his missions so Dean wouldn’t have to do everything on his own, but Dean declined. The angels don’t want any more demons involved. Asmodeus could have pointed out that he’s not actually a real demon because he doesn’t torture souls for fun or smoke around possessing people. Even his black eyes are little more than a side effect of Hell and he still feels pretty human by and large, thank you very much. But that’s not an argument that would impress Dean, who’s a little more demonic than most of them, and it certainly wouldn’t impress the angels.

So Dean leaves alone. And he doesn’t come back.

They don’t even notice, at first. Dean’s been gone for long stretches of time before and there are enough stray, mindless demons with barely enough of their old self left to maintain an intellect gnawing their way into their territory to distract them for a while.

They first notice how long Dean was gone when the fortress starts to fall apart. When they smell the sulphur in the air for the fist time in ages.

They’ve been hearing the screams of the damned all the time since Sam left, but they are louder now, as if the damned are getting closer.

Then the angels send message that Dean is supposed to come to Heaven once more. But Dean is nowhere to be found. Not for them, and not for Heaven. That’s when they get worried.

Frantic searching ensues. Both Hell and earth are razed for clues. They find out what happened from a farmer in Iowa who saw the whole thing and will be scarred for life.

It only gets worse after that.


	4. Chapter 4

Getting out of Heaven isn’t hard. Jimmy Novak has left Heaven countless times, and even though he was rarely aware during those events, he was aware often enough to see how it goes: You’re in Heaven, and then you’re not.

Angels move between Heaven and earth the same way they move between different spots downstairs. Jimmy’s soul just gets pulled along from wherever it is the moment Castiel wants to leave and finds itself on earth in his old body. Or some kind of material projection of his old body. He’s not even sure about that anymore.

The point is that leaving Heaven the way the angels do it is out of the question for Sam.

But Jimmy has been here a long time. He knows there are other ways – backdoors angels sometimes take when they leave Heaven without permission. When they fly down the usual way, they leave a signature that tells everyone they’ve gone. The doors are just… doors. And they are always open.

The tricky thing is finding them.

Naturally, they are in spots where no one would happen to step through them by accident. And they are being used by beings who can fly. Already having a bit of an idea, it doesn’t take Jimmy a lot of research, in the end, to find one conveniently just outside the great hall.

He has no clear memory of it, but Jimmy has the distant impression that Castiel, or rather the thing he has become, has repeatedly used it in recent times. Perhaps he, too, needs to hide every now and then.

The difficult part is getting there. From beside the throne Jimmy could basically see it if it weren’t invisible, but Sam is in chains and the hall is never entirely empty of angels.

So getting rid of the chains is Jimmy’s first task. Waiting for a convenient moment is part of it. Then he has to get Sam to the right spot and hope he makes it.

And then, finally, he has to wait for the New God’s wrath.

He’s going to make Sam promise. Jimmy will only free him if he promises he’ll find Claire even before finding Dean and makes sure she won’t consent to becoming his successor as Castiel’s vessel.

But first he has to figure out how get Sam out of here in the first place. He already checked the chains – they have no weak spots, the shackles no lock. It’s all been created by the minds of the New God and his angels. Nothing Jimmy is capable of doing could break them.

Or so he thinks – until he gives a hard tug on one of the chains going through Sam’s wings and the whole tings comes rattling down on them. It was merely a gesture of his frustration and Jimmy is so taken by surprise that the heavy thing nearly falls right on his head.

It doesn’t, because it somehow stops existing before it touches him.

That’s admittedly odd, but Jimmy doesn’t waste time on thinking about it. He quickly looks around if anyone has seen what he did, but the only two angels currently present in the hall are right on the other end and don’t look in their direction.

Sam doesn’t make a sound and doesn’t move so no one will notice until he’s free to start running. He listens intently as Jimmy explains to him where the door is. Castiel’s vessel will accompany him to the balcony and then stay behind and await his fate.

While he works he brings up his daughter. To his utter dismay, Sam shakes his head.

“Come with me,” he says instead. “You’re right, Cas won’t be happy with you. Maybe he really will kill you. But maybe he won’t. The way he is right now, you might be taking my place here soon enough and your daughter will still be in danger.”

“I can’t.” Just the idea is absurd, even though Jimmy is beginning to understand that non-existence might not be the worst thing to happen to him. “He’ll find me wherever I am. And then he’ll find you.”

“I can get you to a safe place. Please, Jimmy!”

“No. I won’t.” All the time, Jimmy did little more than watch as the angels tortured Sam. He won’t endanger him like this, now.

Besides, he is painfully aware that a father in hiding could never offer the same protection to his daughter as a promise binding a king of Hell.

“I won’t let you die for me. If you stay, so will I.”

Jimmy gulps. Audibly. “What about Dean?”

“I’m confident that you’re not stubborn enough to let him come to harm.”

One of the angels is looking in their direction. Only seconds now and he’ll notice that the chains are gone. There is no more time to lose over this debate.

So Jimmy pulls Sam to his feet and runs with him. They are almost to the window by the time they hear shouts behind them. Only seconds now and Sam is stumbling, shouldn’t even be able to stand, let along run, after who-knows-how-long he’s been chained. Jimmy hasn’t even completely made up his mind yet. He might just let Sam fly and stay behind. Push him off the balcony himself if he has to. But then they reach the edge and suddenly Sam’s arms wrap around him and Sam’s voice calls in his ear, “Hold on tight! On earth I can’t summon my wings.”

The words don’t even make sense to Jimmy because he can’t think. Hands that are not Sam’s reach for him and then the ground is gone from beneath his feet and he can’t tell up from down, doesn’t even know if he’s flying or falling. He only wonders how Sam can even fly with his wings full of holes…

…and then he really is falling, no doubt about it, because after a second of feeling like he left his stomach somewhere above him, he hits the ground. Hard.

Actually, he mostly hits Sam who somehow ended up under him. But that still is hard and painful, and the parts of Jimmy that doesn’t hit Sam still hit the ground. Admittedly, it is grass and not concrete, but even that is anything but pleasant.

But it seems they got off lightly. The fall wasn’t that far, so the hole in the fabric of whatever must have spit them out not that high above the ground. It could have been much worse, and Jimmy wonders if they would have been able to figure out a way to save themselves in the time it took to fall twenty thousand feet if they’d been returned that high.

Then he thinks about how he almost send Sam through this alone, not knowing he can’t fly on this side. And how he didn’t think Sam could fly anyway, so what kind of awful plan did he come up with here? And then he remembers that he didn’t think it would matter because Sam is dead anyway and shouldn’t be able to die, which leads to the thought that he’s dead himself, so what in Heaven’s name did he just hurt? It certainly wasn’t his body.

And if he is hurt, what about Sam who hasn’t been so healthy to begin with?

In a hurry, Jimmy gets off the boy, but Sam doesn’t move. Worry stabs Jimmy like a knife until he notices how Sam is looking up to the sky with an expression of quiet awe on his face. He’s still naked and his body is still covered in wounds. Now he’s no longer chained and bend over, Jimmy can see the full extend of the damage dealt.

Sam’s wings, as predicted, are gone.

The angels Jimmy half-expected to follow after them don’t show up. It’s not that much of a surprise, actually – these doors to earth don’t have a set exit like devil’s gates do. Whoever uses them determines where they end up, although that process is rather rough and vague. Perhaps they were dropped out this close to the ground because the gate picked up on Jimmy’s wish not to go splat after a ten thousand feet fall. Or it’s all random in their case because only angels can use the doors at will.

In any case, the angels from the hall can’t follow them because they don’t know where they went. Still, Jimmy can’t imagine Heaven is going to need very long to find them.

Trying to get his bearings, Jimmy sits up and back, away from Sam. He’s wearing his suit, he realises, but not the trench coat Castiel used to be so fond of.

At the thought of his angel something inside him twists, but he is quickly distracted by his surroundings. As it seems, they have landed on a meadow. In a park. In board daylight. And while he can’t see anyone around, Jimmy can hear the unconcerned voices of people not too far away.

And he’s sitting beside an injured, naked man. Bad impressions are unavoidable if someone walks in on them.

Suddenly Jimmy wishes he had his coat, if only because he could use it to cover Sam. Spare himself the embarrassment and offer Sam a little dignity, if nothing else.

Sam doesn’t seem to even have noticed his public nakedness so far, or if he does, he doesn’t care. He’s still lying there, looking at the sky, and Jimmy notices that his eyes are no longer black. They look normal enough on first sight. Only on second glance does Jimmy see that the irises are no longer the hazel he vaguely remembers but yellow. Almost golden.

Actually, they seem to be glowing a little.

“What now?” Jimmy asks. “Where are we?”

“Boston,” Sam informs him, as if that were obvious.

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

Okay, maybe a demon knows something like that. An angel’s vessel definitely doesn’t.

Sam’s bandages are once again soaked through and he’s seeping into the grass. Jimmy would like to guide the boy’s attention to that fact and then try to get some information on what Sam is planning to do now, but they find themselves surrounded by strangers before he can even open his mouth.

Five people, men and women, who seemingly appeared out of nowhere. They look harmless enough but for the fact that they are all, for some reason, wearing sunglasses. It’s not that sunny.

So they look like a bunch of hired killers. Jimmy’s first reaction it to jump, and their first reaction upon seeing him is draw knifes.

Knifes. Not swords. These are not angels.

“Wait,” Sam says suddenly, his voice sharp. “It’s not him.”

“Looks like him,” one of the men says, sounding very suspicious. They don’t step closer, but they don’t lower their weapons either.

“This is Jimmy, his vessel.” Sam glares up at them from where he’s sitting on the ground. “He helped me. Put those away!” He nods at the blades and at once they all disappear beneath jackets or in folds of their shirts. Jimmy’s remembered heart skips a few beats when he realises that they thought he was Castiel and would have killed him (or worse) if Sam hadn’t stopped them. (Probably worse, since he’s already dead.)

One of the women offers her hand and Sam lets himself he pulled to his feet. He doesn’t seem at all bothered by his lack of clothing, and neither is anyone else. Anyone but Jimmy, that is, who does his best not to look in Sam’s direction.

Funny, considering he’s seen him naked for weeks.

“What happened to Dean?” Sam asks. “Where is he?”

Someone finally hands him a robe and he wraps it around himself without comment. It’s black and long and looks completely out of place. Surrounded by the sunglassed group, Sam looks more like the leader of a sect than anything else.

It finally dawns on Jimmy who these people are and why they are wearing sunglasses. One of them hands a pair to Sam to hide his glowing yellow eyes. It does nothing to make him look less odd.

“It was Meg,” the one who gave him the glasses says. Sam turns sharply, baring his teeth.

“Are you sure?” he hisses.

“Absolutely. Some guy saw him get taken. Didn’t even know what he saw. We found Meg’s vessel, too – she was still a little alive. Remembered that Meg wants Dean for-”

“I know what she want him for,” Sam interrupts him. He looks around and Jimmy does the same, noting a few people at the far end of the green who stand staring at them. Probably just passer-bys who wonder about the odd group, but he doesn’t have any desire to find out if he’s right.

Sam seems to have the same thought even though he looks like he would much rather go and kill something. Jimmy can hardly suppress a shiver when he looks at him. The unnatural calmness the boy king displayed all through his captivity disappeared when he learned what happened to his brother.

Regardless, his voice is still rather calm when he says, “We’ll go home for now. Is anyone else here?”

“No. The others are making sure we still have a home to return to,” a woman with long blonde hair and black clothes says. Sam nods his approval.

“Good.”

“What about him?” the woman points at Jimmy who doesn’t like the attention.

“We’ll take him with us.”

The guy who gave the sunglasses – a short man in his early twenties – throws Jimmy a look through his own glasses, then shrugs. Apparently he’s lost his aversion when he learned he’s not facing a god.

Jimmy has no choice but to follow them as they walk out of the park. They don’t make it further than a hundred yards, though, when suddenly Sam grabs his arm and Jimmy’s standing on a different meadow, this one not belonging to any park. It reminds him of the way Castiel moves on earth, except that it feels completely different.

They emerged in the shadow of a tree. Before them is a hill and the mouth of a cave, not much higher than Jimmy himself, leads inside, lined by stones.

The stones are covered in symbols.

“This is one of the oldest devil’s gates there are,” the short guy explains when he notices Jimmy’s interest. “It’s been here since long before the middle ages. You actually have to know how to use it, otherwise you’ll just end up in a cave.”

“How do I use it?” Jimmy asks.

“I’ll take you along,” Sam offers. But before he does, he hesitates for a second. “It’s Hell,” he says, as if he had to remind Jimmy of that detail. “You’re not going to like it.”

“Heaven’s not that much fun either,” Jimmy says bravely. It’s not even true – Heaven is wonderful. That’s why it’s Heaven. But it’s been spoiled for him lately, by Cas becoming something else, by the terrible task of caring for an abused prisoner, and finally by the threat of gruesome torture upon being taken back there. As a deeply religious man he never thought he’d ever see it like this, but right now Hell is the lesser of two evils.

Sam takes him by the hand without another word and maybe Jimmy holds on a little too tightly as he is led through something he can’t define; like a storm without wind, a long walk on nothing that’s over in a second.

He closes his eyes without meaning to and when he opens them again, Jimmy finds himself on a large field of dead grass, beside a hill. Before him there are dead, leafless trees. The sky is the colour of sulphur – just looking at it, Jimmy things he can smell the terrible stink.

It takes him a second to realise that he really _is_ smelling sulphur. It’s faint, though, not nearly as strong as he expected.

A hot, dry wind is blowing, carrying with it noises Jimmy eventually identifies as screams. He shudders. This is Hell. This really, truly Hell, and he willingly walked into it.

Against his will he wonders if Castiel knows yet of their escape. How he feels about his vessel going to Hell rather that staying with him.

If his family is still safe.

“Sam,” he says. “My daughter…”

“Cas won’t hurt her,” Sam says before he can finish. “Not yet. But if he wanted to, there would be nothing anyone could do to stop him.”

Jimmy stops on the spot. He knows Sam is right – Cas is a God now; what could any of them possibly offer to fight him? But if that was supposed to comfort him, then Sam has gone further from being human than he originally assumed.

Right now, Jimmy wants nothing more than get out and run to his family. He hasn’t seen them for so long, not the real them. He’s basically corporal now, for whatever reason. He’s just himself, without an angel riding him, and he could touch them…

And he knows he wouldn’t be doing them a favour, would only tear open old wounds and lead the angels straight to them; but he still longs for them and wants to see with his own eyes that they are safe.

The boy king’s attention, however, has already moved on. The wind tears at Sam’s hair and robe. His face is dark when he looks around. “That long?” he says quietly.

“He’s been gone for months,” the blonde woman confirms. It seems absurd to Jimmy – there’s no way that much time has passed between Dean’s last visit and now. But then he remembers that time moves faster here. And he doesn’t even know for sure how much time has passed in Heaven. For Sam, it was certainly longer than for him.

Sam starts moving without a word, towards a goal hidden by the drifting sand.  After a few steps he stumbles over nothing and sways on his feet and Jimmy remembers his injuries and general bad state. However, when two of his friends (followers?) move to support him he shakes them off.

He’s also moving pretty fast for someone on the verge of falling over.

Eventually a building emerges from the dust. It’s made of bare stone and looks like a small fortress more than anything else. It has only two storeys but foundation is board and once they are inside Jimmy can see that it’s bigger than it seemed from the outside.

The corridors are narrow, though, and the rooms he sees just as big as they have to be. This place has been built for practicality, not luxury. Jimmy wonders who built it; maybe it’s always been here – he doesn’t think there are architects in Hell.

Unless they were evil architects.

Upon closer observation, Jimmy sees the obvious sign of decay. Carpets that made the rooms more comfortable have rotted away, furniture is torn or broken. Stones have fallen out of the wall and the same dry grass as outside has grown through gabs in the floor before it died. Torches on the walls are hardly able to light the darkness that threatens to swallow the windowless corridor and it’s almost unbearably hot.

As they walk, a faint tremor runs through the ground.

“Oh shit,” someone says right beside Jimmy. “I hope it doesn’t get bad.”

It’s the small guy who gave Sam the shades and has finally taken off his own. He flashes black eyes at Jimmy and grins, but he looks worried at the same time.

“What do you mean?”

“The boss. He’s not exactly balanced right now. I had hoped everything would get better when he returns but right now it rather looks like he might tear the place down.” He narrows his eyes into a glare. “So you are the vessel of that asshat? Congratulations.”

“My name’s Jimmy.”

“Well. I’m Asmodeus.”

Jimmy looks the guy over. He doesn’t looks like someone with such a name. Actually, he looks like a pretty normal guy, if one ignored the black eyes. “What did you mean, get better?”

“What, you don’t know? This is Hell, dumbo.”

“I know that.” Jimmy’s scared, but also irritated and refusing to be intimidated by this place and this demon. “Why would it get better with Sam here?”

The demon raises an eyebrow. “You really don’t know anything, huh? I thought you’ve been to Heaven.”

“Yes. Heaven. It’s quite a difference.”

“Not that much, actually. The mechanics behind them are pretty much the same. Except in Heaven your place is formed by your own good memories, and here by your nightmares and the sadism of someone else. Well, usually.”

Jimmy looks around but the place doesn’t look much more terrifying than the ruin of a castle on earth. Sam has long since hurried away and disappeared around a corner, and Jimmy feels a little betrayed for being left behind like this after the boy king dragged him here. “So who’s nightmare is this?”

“Sam’s, of course.” Asmodeus sounds a little irritated; apparently that was a stupid question. “Though I wouldn’t call it a nightmare, except on the bad days,” the demon clarifies a second later. “This is _not_ a bad day, by the way, though things usually are a hell of a lot better than this.”

Jimmy blinks at Asmodeus and Asmodeus blinks back until he accepts that he needs to offer a bit on an explanation. “Sam and Hell,” he says, “they get along, mostly. It’s not exactly dream world here – I mean, it’s still Hell and can only be so nice – but when Sam’s okay, this is a pretty decent place compared to all the rest. No stink, no screams, no rot – and most of all, no spikes to be shoved on.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Jimmy admits.

“Yeah, it isn’t. But as I said, Sam’s subconscious has a big influence here, and Hell is always ready to get in through the cracks. These tremors you’re feeling? That’s Sam going out of his mind with worry for Dean. And don’t get your hope up – he can’t control it.”

As if to agree, the ground shakes again, harder this time. “Why Sam? Why not you?”

“He’s the boy king.” Asmodeus shrugs as if that was enough of an explanation. “He just kinda belongs here, you know? Don’t worry, he’s doing pretty well. He could be worse. Much, much worse.”

“This is good?” Hot wind blows into their faces as they pass a room where the ceiling has collapsed and the door is missing.

“Oh, it’s not perfect. We usually have walls everywhere, and water and stuff. Didn’t you listen? But Sam was gone. This whole place is kept save and more of less stable by him, so after he left, it started to fall apart. The water’s the first to go, every fucking time. Do you have any idea how much that sucks?”

Jimmy can imagine. “So it all falls apart every time Sam leaves?” It seems unbelievable.

And impractical.

But Asmodeus shakes his head. “Only after a while. And if Dean’s here it’s maintained even without Sam. But Dean’s gone too, so this is the result.”

Sam’s reaction to seeing this place suddenly makes sense. “How does that work? I though it was Sam’s world.”

“Yeah. Don’t ask me. Apparently they’re soul mates or something gay like that.” The demon suddenly grins. “Well, they’re mates sure enough. Dean came down here with a lifetime of kinky experience, and he’s been…”

“I can imagine,” Jimmy hurries to say, though he really, really can’t. And doesn’t want to. This incest thing still creeps him out.

Asmodeus grins wider, clearly enjoying his discomfort. Then, suddenly, he turns serious. “Dean said they made the boss scream up there. Is that true?”

The grim memory replaces the unbidden imagines of incestuous sex but isn’t an improvement. “Yes.”

“Wow.”

“Wow?” Jimmy asks incredulously. “You’re enjoying that, demon?”

“No, no!” Asmodeus shakes his head and lifts his hands in a gesture of denial. “Bad choice of words, man. Just, Sam doesn’t scream. Never. So I get why Dean was so pissed!”

“He doesn’t scream? That’s good, isn’t it?”

“Well, it doesn’t mean he never gets hurt, if that’s what you’re thinking. There are a lot of evil dumbshits down here, and most of them are after Sam’s ass. Sometimes literally. Figures it takes an angel to actually get a sound out of him.” There’s obvious disgust in the boy’s voice.

Jimmy think of the miserable and very silent human shaped pile Sam has been the first time he saw him after Dameal branded him. “You mean he’s usually too much of a hard-ass to scream?” he asks incredulously.

Asmodeus rolls his eyes in the face of Jimmy’s cluelessness. “No, he’s just too fucked up.” And when he notices Jimmy’s blank stare he explains, “Sam’s been in the deepest circle of Hell. With Satan and Satan’s big brother. Do you really think any demon can keep up with that? No matter what anyone does to him, someone else did it to him before, and better. Once, a couple of yeas ago, he’s been taken by another demon lord. They nailed him to the ground with rusty spikes, tore off his skin, fucked him good and proper, the usual program. Sam never made a sound.”

Jimmy stares at him, sickened, but Asmodeus continues to talk about torture and rape in the unconcerned way only demons can. He actually looks very satisfied when he says, “The others did, though, when Dean found them.”

The human doesn’t know what to say to that. He only knows that this place is terrible and he wants to be somewhere else. He hasn’t been able to imagine how unbearable it would be to be in a place where something like that is normal.

Fortunately, he doesn’t have to say anything because they have reached a small hall and Sam’s voice sounds through it, calling for someone called “Andy”. Asmodeus grimaces and calls back, “Coming!”

Jimmy follows a little slower, too bothered by this place and what Asmodues – or Andy – told him to hurry, yet too bothered by this place and what Andy told him to stay behind on his own. The other demons who came to pick Sam up have long since scattered in all directions, and Jimmy has no interest in getting to know any of  them, even though through Sam he’s already leaned that not all demons are inherently evil.

They’re still… alien. Unpredictable. At home in this place and with such a great potential for wickedness.

And Jimmy finds another of them when he arrives at the room Asmodeus disappeared into. It’s not much larger than the cell Sam was kept in in Heaven, except it has furniture. But the walls are burned and it smells of smoke. The covers of the large double bed are torn and dirty and the bookshelves on the wall have collapsed. There’s a closet containing clothes, but most of them are rags that are lying strewn all over the floor – doubtlessly left by Sam as he looked for something still suitable for wearing.

Now he’s sitting on the bed dressed in black pants that are torn at the knees – probably not for fashion reasons. He’s also wearing a tight, sleeveless black shirt and the raw and burned skin on his wrists is covered by black bandages. The blond woman Jimmy saw before is standing beside him, wrapping more bandages of the same colour around the still-bleeding cuts in his left arm. Altogether, Sam looks every inch the demon lord he is.

Until he looks up and Jimmy can see that he is still pale, with dry lips and bloodshot eyes. He’s also still covered in bruises and minor cuts. In fact, he would be the very picture of a beaten victim if there wasn’t something in his eyes that says he’s anything but defeated.

“You know what to do if I don’t come back,” he says to the woman who is just now done with bandaging his arm. The bandage will be soaked soon enough, but at least on the black fabric it won’t be as obvious until the blood starts running down his arms again.

“Where are you going?” Jimmy asks, alarmed. Something here smells of a bad plan. The kind of plan that makes people leave orders for the case of their death.

“I’m going to get Dean.”

Yes, Jimmy kind of expected that. “Not alone, right?”

“I’m the only one who can.” There is something in the way Sam’s eyes are looking right through all of them at a destination only he can see that tells Jimmy he doesn’t need anyone else and doesn’t want anyone else.

But Jimmy doesn’t feel like letting him go like that. Not after anything he’s been through and only just getting away alive. “It’s obviously a trap! Just like what... the angels did. And you’re walking right into it!”

“It’s not a trap. They don’t expect me come back,” Sam says impatiently and stands. On thin, trembling legs, covered in injuries and oozing blood. The demons he’ll go after are going to fall over with fear when they see him.

But when he looks at Jimmy with more darkness in his golden eyes than Jimmy ever saw in the black ones of a normal demon the human thinks that they just might.

 

 

+*+*+

 

 

Sam leaves only minutes later. He slips a long vest over his shirt that covers the knife in his belt and that’s all the preparation he makes. The knife seems to be a ridiculously small weapon to take into battle with God-knows-how-many demons (or maybe God doesn’t know either), but he doesn’t take anything else. All he says to Jimmy before he leaves is, “Lily will take care of you”, pointing him to the women who dressed his wounds. Then he leaves and Jimmy runs after him along with Lily and Andy, but even though the two demons don’t look happy neither of them tries to stop Sam. It seems they merely want to see him off.

Jimmy feels like he has to do something. Anything. Silly as it seems, he feels responsible for this boy. But Sam doesn’t even notice any of them anymore, and despite his weakened state they can barely keep up with him.

The fortress, it turns out, is built on a cliff. Not a cliff over an ocean but a cliff over an endless black pit that smells on sulphur and carries the echoes of a thousand screams. It leads right down to the next deeper circle of hell, Andy explains, and Jimmy could say exactly what kind of sinners go to the second circle for what kind of punishment, except he doesn’t believe his knowledge is accurate anymore and is distracted anyway when Sam runs over a balcony and takes a leap off the railing, just like he did in Heaven.

Only this time he doesn’t have wings.

Jimmy’s breath stops. For a second Sam falls freely, then his large black wings unfold seemingly out of thin air and he’s soaring up.

This is the first time Jimmy sees the wings in action; it’s a majestic sight, but he can’t enjoy it for long, because Sam flaps them once and disappears downwards, into the dark.


	5. Chapter 5

The funny thing is that nothing the bitch can do to him comes even close to hurting Dean as much as simply being here does. She knows that, of course. Has been riding that fact for ages now.

Fucking bitch. She’s so fucking overdue for having her rotten soul burned out of her.

Unfortunately, Dean can’t do that. He doesn’t have Sam’s powers and staring angrily at her doesn’t do anything but make her laugh. Of course, if Sam had been here he wouldn’t have been able to do it either, because there _are_ ways of blocking those powers of his and Meg isn’t so stupid to go anywhere near him unless it’s safe. Dean still likes to indulge in the fantasy that his brother would show up and toast her slowly and painfully while she busies herself directing her lackeys how to carve him up next.

Of course that’s not an ideal fantasy. Dean is supposed to rescue Sammy, not the other way round. He’s supposed to rescue Sammy _right now_ , and the fantasy of how he busts into Heaven, frees Sam from his chains and then lets him watch as Dean rips out Cas’ multi-dimensional entrails and smears them all over the walls is an even sweeter one.

Worst of all is that he actually had a way to do that, minus the murder and mayhem. Briefly, Dean was in the possession of the Key to Heaven, one of the weapons Balthazar had stolen, and with it even a demon like him can enter Heaven on his own. Better even – while in the possession of the key his presence would have gone unnoticed. So while Dean might not have been able to cause a little carnage, he at least could have gotten Sam out, and his insides still clench at the thought that he was _so close_ and still failed.

Because he would have needed time to make it work. Time Cas didn’t give him.

And now he can’t even work on finding another way to save Sam because Dean can’t get away and Sam’s not here. (Sam’s not here, Sam’s not here Sam’s not here notherenotherenothere.) And it’s driving Dean crazy. It’s been the only thing he can think of for a long time. He can’t sense his brother anymore, and that’s a first since the moment he slit his own throat to give Cas the finger and then proceeded to give the finger to two reapers who wanted to take his brother away from him. That moment, standing beside their own dead bodies, was the first time in ages Sam even recognized Dean’s face and the connection he’d felt when they clung together, refusing to let forces beyond life and death tear them apart, the sense of _Sam_ never disappeared afterwards. Dean always knew where his brother was or how he was doing.

But ever since Sam was taken to Heaven the connection has been getting weaker, as if that distance, at least, is too great. The brief visits Dean made renewed the strange bond between them, but it’s been too long and Sam simply faded away. Dean doesn’t know how he’s doing. The last things he sensed from him have been pain (ignored), worry (for Dean) and barely controlled rage. It’s been getting fainter as the connection faded until Dean could barely even sense his brother’s existence.

Even that is gone now. And Dean doesn’t know.

“I hear your feathery friend send for you,” Meg told him about a week after getting the drop on him and dragging him here. “What do you think he’ll do to little Sammy if you don’t show up?”

And after another ten days filled with much agony and even more impotent rage, she said, “Seems dear Cas got impatient. Parts of your brother have been raining down to earth for three days now.” And she smiled her ugly, ugly smile. “Oops. Well, at least now you can start to concentrate on the important things, like where your own bits will land when I’m done with you.”

But Dean never thought about that. He knows Meg wants him to think Sam is gone. He knows why. But he doesn’t think Sam is, because he can’t believe Cas would do that. Not because he’s too good a person for that but because even changed as he is he knows Sam is the way to control Dean. He must know Dean would be there at his beg and call if he could, and killing Sam would mean giving away the only leverage he could ever hope to get.

No, Sam’s still there. What Dean thinks of is the fucking knife. The cuts Cas inflicted on Sam and the threat of cutting off bits and pieces that will never grow back. Dean is pretty sure new-Cas is not above that.

Fortunately, Meg doesn’t know about that knife. Her taunts are poking into the dark and so far she’s missed any sore spots because she doesn’t know what Dean is really afraid of.

Sam won’t be killed, but there are so many much worse things that can be done to him.

The worst of them being him getting swallowed by his memories of the cage. The kind of memories that tear down their home and create monsters out of thin air. And maybe, with Heaven being so alien to Sam, he won’t be able to get back…

“Seriously, Dean,” Meg says from somewhere behind him. “Don’t be so stubborn. There’s nothing to fight for, is there? Without Sammy? Don’t worry, it’s going to be so much better once you let go.”

The bitter thing is that she’s right. If Sam was gone, if he _really_ was gone – erased from existence, no soul to retrieve, no hope of finding him again in Heaven, Hell, purgatory or wherever – then there would be nothing left for Dean. He might let go then, stop being who he was because that person doesn’t exist without Sam, and hope to find relief in the mindless cruelty of a true demon. And he feels it inside him, that pull – feels the demon he would have become had Castiel not saved him so long ago. It’s always stronger in Hell, as if it sucks in the spirit of the place and can’t wait to be born, but against Sam it doesn’t stand a chance.

And Sam’s still there. Somewhere. And he needs Dean – _Dean_ , not something else – to come for him.

“Change the record bitch,” Dean pressed out through a bloody grin. “This one is getting old.”

She comes into view from the left and as always it’s hard to interpret her expression since she hardly has a face to wear one. She’s lost her human self-image so long ago she probably wouldn’t be able to recognize her original face if someone pushed her non-existent nose into it. When Dean was first taken here she resembled the body she’s been wearing while on earth, but even that has been dropping away bit by bit so now she’s little more than a torn grimace with single strands of hair.

Her lackeys don’t look any better. It’s what Hell does to those who forget who they used to be.

She takes the knife this time. Dean knows this whole thing is getting to her pride. Meg went through Alastair’s school of torture and should be able to break Dean just as well as her master had. The circumstances are different of course, but Meg still needs this to prove herself. Personal hatred also plays a part, not to mention that she needs Dean broken to get what she wants.

Finishing her teacher’s job is not what she is after. Meg feels no misguided loyalty to the guy who once tortured the humanity out of her, although she takes a certain pride in having learned from the best. No, what she wants is the powerful demon Dean has the potential of becoming under her control. She wants the territory he rules with Sam, and she needs a weapon _against_ Sam whom she believes to be dead about as much as Dean does.

She’s tried this before. She also tried getting Dean over Sam, but that backfired terribly. Now Sam’s not here ( _not here!_ ), Dean is vulnerable and no one can get him out of here but himself.

Which he intends to do. And then he’ll bring the bitch’s head to Cas as a present when he goes for a visit!

For now he grinds his teeth and does his best not to scream. Screaming isn’t actually that bad he’s learned during his first trip to Hell – everyone does (except for Sam, but Sam is so fucked in the head that he doesn’t think a missing limb is a serious injury), it’s nothing to be ashamed of. But in this case, Dean simply doesn’t want to give them the satisfaction.

He’s only just been healed, even got all his fingers back, which would be nice if he wasn’t sure he’s going to lose them again soon enough. Currently, Meg’s back to tearing off his skin in little slices and Dean has to admit that really fucking hurts.

But it hurts not nearly as much as the gnawing hole inside him that Sam used to fill.

Suddenly Meg drops the knife and is right in Dean’s face – so close he nearly suffocates on the smell of sulphur. “Scream for me, Dean,” she coos. “Sammy’s not going to make you do that anymore.” She touches him in places her hands don’t belong, but at least those places are currently still attached to his body. “Be nice to me and I’ll make you forget why you ever thought fucking your brother’d be the ultimate kick. Or you continue to play hard to get and I’ll eat your dick while my boys make you scream for an entirely different reason.”

“Hate to break the news to you,” Dean gasps, “but you’re not exactly every boy’s wet dream. I’d rather eat my dick myself that stick it in _you_.”

“We’ll see about that,” she says and draws away. “Hey, boys,” she sing-songs as she steps away from the cross Dean is nailed to. “Playtime!”

Dean doesn’t do them the favour of showing any reaction to the prospect of another few hours or days of being stripped of flesh and muscle, played with and sliced to pieces. The fact that they have nothing on Alastair when it comes to creativity and determination still doesn’t make it fun.

This is different from Dean’s first trip down not only because of the head-torturer, though. For one, during his first trip he didn’t have any prospect of ever getting away so there really was nothing for him to hold on for but himself. And he was never that good at doing things for himself, had learned too well from too early an age to do things for his dad and Sam first and forget himself in the process. Not really a surprise he failed, then – even though that doesn’t lessen the shame.

At least it didn’t back then. Being a demon and well adjusted to Hell changes the perspective on basically everything.

Which is the other thing that’s different. Not only does Dean have to hold on for Sam which is so much second nature to him that anything else is unthinkable, he’s also a demon now and has a much worse demon sitting somewhere inside him, waiting for a chance to be born. And this demon isn’t scared, as the old Dean has been. It isn’t desperate and hopeless in the face of unbearable agony without any hope for an end.

This demon is fucking pissed.

But the temptation… The temptation is still there. Back then, Dean has been tempted by the promise of the pain, fear and humiliation finally stopping. This time he knows that if only he gives in, if only he gets off this rack, he can tear them apart as they did him. Only he’ll do it better. He’ll make them regret that they ever laid hand on him. They’ll have all their taunts cut off their tongues in stripes and before he destroys them so thoroughly that they’ll never come back again in any shape or form he’ll make sure they realise what a fucking mistake it was to make him angry.

On top of that he’ll make them taste the humiliation of seeing that the pathetic skills they are so proud of are nothing compared to his.

And when he’s done with them, he’ll move on to Meg. Meg, who keeps him from saving Sam. That thought is like a drug to the demon inside him. She’s harming Sammy and Dean will make her _pay_ , and it would be so easy…

The rage in Dean is almost all-consuming and in a way it’s harder to fight than the desperation has been all those years ago. It’s fed by the very basic need to get back at these smug bastards, by worry, the need to _do_ something and the knowledge that he could.

Meg thinks she can control him. He’s gonna _show_ her-

And then he would go get Sam from Heaven, but the person he would be then isn’t someone he wants anywhere near his brother. This is what keeps him from giving in just for the sake of it, but the more Dean thinks about Sam in Heaven the more he starts to wonder if him becoming a monster would really be that much worse for Sam than what he might suffer now.

For now, all Dean does in defiance is glare at the demon with the ugly twisted features and the rusty hammer in his hand with all the rage he is feeling and bare his teeth. The demon flinches away and hesitates to come near him; there is some meagre satisfaction in that, at least.

But of course that’s not going to help Sammy at all.

What does help Sam is the fact that, as it turns out, he’s not imprisoned in Heaven anymore. Dean can only stare, not really comprehending what he sees, when the tall, slender shape of his brother drops down on the balcony behind his torturers. Sam doesn’t make a sound – not when he arrives and not when he enters through the glassless window, and Dean is almost convinced he’s imagining his appearance. He almost _wishes_ he was imagining this because here Sam is, so close to him, and Dean still senses nothing. And that would mean, that would mean the connection they had, once lost, won’t come back. That would mean he’s never going to _feel_ his brother again. Not like that.

But in the end Dean doesn’t think that much. He’s really just staring, with some panic and confusion and ridiculous pride running in wordless circles as he watches Sam walk into the room, draw a knife from underneath his vest and stick it into the back of the demon nearest to Dean before anyone else notices he’s there.

The other nameless jackass has a chance to be a little shocked and afraid before Sam throws him away with a gesture of his hand and makes him combust into ashes. Then Sam drops down on the fallen demon and sticks the knife in his face, just when the demon tries to get up again.

Meg doesn’t stay to watch, clever bitch that she is. Unfortunately for her, she finds herself thrown against a wall and held there, without Sam even so much as looking at her.

Dean wonders distantly if it’s a coincidence that she landed on one of the spikes that have held him upright during his first week here. As he watches Sam place his hand on the forehead of the helpless demon beneath him and the guy screams while his essence is burned away in a process that takes much longer than it needs to, he kind of doubts it.

When he is done, Sam comes over to where Dean is hanging. Without doubt he wants to free him, but all Dean can see is how pale and bruised he looks, and the bandages where Cas cut him; all the rage is back. Rage directed at Cas. Cas hurt Sam. Cas imprisoned him and inflicted wounds that won’t heal and used him against Dean, and he took him from Dean. He cut the bond between them, made sure that Dean can only look at Sam and see his injuries but not sense them. They will forever be limited to words and Dean will _hurt_ Cas for that.

Then the nails that went through his hands are gone and he’s falling right into Sam’s arms – and the moment they touch everything is flooding back to him. Suddenly Sam is _there_ , right inside him where he should be, and Dean can feel his exhaustion and pain, and the old memories of unspeakable horrors that are crashing against his consciousness like waves, threatening to overwhelm him and so much stronger without Dean there to focus on and help keep them away. But all that lies forgotten and unimportant under the incredible worry Sam felt for him, the relief of having him back and the rage that Dean’s been hurt. There’s a need for revenge that rivals his brother’s, and then there’s Dean’s own rage and worry and his own relief, so much stronger than Sam’s and beyond his brother’s understanding because Sam doesn’t sense Dean the way Dean senses him.

It’s too much all at once. Dean sways under the onslaught but Sam keeps him upright, keeps him stable. Then Sam makes a surprised noise when Dean fists his hands into his hair and pulls him into a kiss, pressing their bodies together as if he could merge with Sam in body as in soul, right here and now, and fuck that bitch who’s watching with blood running over her mangled lips. Dean kisses Sam like he’s air Dean needs to breathe and Sam returns every kiss, not quite getting it but so, so happy to have him back.

Dean’s hands are punctured and leave bloody trails on Sam’s skin as they roam all over his body, but Dean doesn’t care. This is his sign: _Look, this is mine and if you touch it I’m going to rip you apart!_ There’s pain but Sam is keeping him upright and Dean already feels himself knitting back together as if simply being near Sam made that happen. It probably does, too, because this is Hell and Hell, if he ever wanted it to, would be Sam’s pet.

Then Dean’s hand brushes over the bandage on Sam’s upper arm and comes back slick with blood that isn’t his.

Sam’s blood. The blood that should never be spilled. It pulls Dean back to the present and the place and he separates from his brother, waking towards Meg’s pathetic, impaled form on legs that are more willing to carry him with every step he takes. Someone needs to die, and even though Meg never touched Sam (this time), she’ll make a good, slow start.

She knows it, too. Tries desperately to get away and something dark and ugly in Dean is utterly delighted by the fear he sees in her eyes.

But Sam, to his shock and consternation, holds him back. “Wait,” he says, before turning to look at Meg. “I have an offer for you,” he tells her.

 

 

*+*+*

 

 

Sam and Meg don’t seal their deal with a kiss. It’s not that kind of deal and Dean is grateful for small mercies. It’s bad enough that she’s going to live (for now), although seeing Sam stick a hand in her chest and twist it around in the smoky black mess that is her soul did offer a certain satisfaction. It’s not fair, though – _he_ wanted to hurt her!

By the time they make their way back home, Dean’s injuries are mostly healed, but he’s still sore and exhausted; nothing will magically snap _that_ away. He’ll need a little rest before going to figure out a way to kill Cas, and he intends to get that rest in his bed with Sam pressed against him and shielded from the rest of the world.

There are two ways to get back home and they pick the fast one because apparently home is falling apart and they have a confused Jimmy Novak as a guest, which leads to a confused Dean. So it seems Jimmy was with Sam in Heaven all the time.

Huh.

Since walking would take too long, Sam takes a leap off the balcony, flies a little circle and then grabs Dean under the arms to lift him off as well. Dean would rather walk, actually, since Sam’s wings are injured and flying can’t be much fun, but Sam insists. It leads to Dean hanging off him all the way up, sensing the pain and effort his brother is going through.

He’ll kick him for that, later. When he has ground under his feet to stand on.

The fortress has changed since Dean left it. It’s crumbled and dirty, and a whole wing is gone entirely. Not fallen apart but gone as if it was never there in the first place. The only reason Dean knows it’s missing is because he remembers it being there.

The place protected by Sam’s subconscious is falling apart and Sam is just a few steps away from a mental breakdown. Dean can sense that, too – his brother was alone for too long, has been imprisoned and tortured for too long. While he doesn’t sense Dean the way Dean senses him his brother’s presence is still something that keeps him stable, and the separation was hard on him. He’s doing his best to focus and not give in to his memories of a different Hell but Dean fears that everything will come crashing down on Sammy the moment the worst is over and he has time to breathe.

Well, not if Dean can prevent it. And he knows some things that are pretty distracting.

Now yet, though. First they have to figure out what to do with Jimmy, who betrayed Castiel and is on the run from Heaven. They have no interest in feeding him to the angels, yet he can’t stay here either. Hell corrupts just by being in it, and besides, Jimmy doesn’t seem to be liking the place very much.

He’s not seeing it on one of the better days.

At least the screams have stopped. It’s blessedly silent in their territory for the first time since Sam left here, and after a few minutes Dean realises that the stench of sulphur is gone as well.

Everyone is pretty exited to see them. Everyone present, anyway. A lot of their closest friends are out right now, fighting attacking enemies and naturally, Sam wants to go and help them. Dean wants that too, but neither of them is exactly up to it at the moment. They send out word that the boy king has returned, though, and that’s probably going to discourage a lot of the attackers.

None of the battles going on is particularly fierce anyway. Mostly, the enemies are lurking around, watching and waiting for a chance to strike. They have lost a grand total of no one to the attacks except for Mel who was killed by Heaven. Dean can tell the exact moment Sam notices her absence by the wave of sadness and rage running through him.

“It was an angel,” he says before Sam can ask. “They didn’t want me to have help on my mission.”

Sam nods wordlessly, his face remaining blank. Dean doesn’t know what he’s thinking – it doesn’t work that way – but he knows the loss and the circumstances leading to it hit his brother hard.

No one told Sam about the girl. He just knows she’s not there anymore, just like he knows Andy’s coming before they can see him. It’s a special irony of fate that he can sense everyone but Dean.

That’s okay, though. He can watch over everyone else while Dean watches over him.

As big brother, lover and protector, it’s his first instinct to get Sam to their bed, take care of his wounds, see if he can do something about those cuts he simply can’t and won’t let bleed and hurt for the rest of eternity. Then he’d make Sammy rest because the flight took what was left of his reserves and now he’s trembling against Dean, out of breath and feeling every wound in a way he didn’t when Dean was still in danger.

But Dean can’t follow his instinct yet, because Sam won’t let him. There’s too much he feels he still has to do.

Andy is the first to come over and welcome his king back to their kingdom. Soon enough the place is going to be swarming with people who want to do the same and maybe give their report in the process. Maybe they’re happy to see Dean, too, but Dean’s done a lot of yelling lately and they probably didn’t miss him all that much. It’s okay with him – actually, he intends to kick them all out, take Sammy and lock them away in their chambers before his brother can get the idea the he’s still well enough to take care of each and every problem that came up at once.

All that yelling he did was worth something, Dean soon realises. One glare is enough to convince everyone they are actually busy elsewhere and don’t want to bother their king any longer. But even after they are all gone Dean’s sticking pretty close to his brother. He has this irrational fear that the moment he lets go Sam is going to be gone again, or fall apart, or this wonderful, wonderful bond between them that even Castiel-with-the-power-of-God couldn’t destroy will be lost. So he has one arm wrapped around Sam’s shoulders while they’re talking to Jimmy, his fingers distractedly stroking the slightly damp bandage on Sam’s upper arm.

Jimmy is the only one left, if only because Sam explicitly told him to stay. He looks decidedly uncomfortable watching them and Dean smirks at him, letting his eyes flash black in the demonic form of a wink.

“Your family is safe,” Sam tells his human friend whom Dean likes but still feels like punching on the ground of him looking like Cas. Or Cas looking like him. Either way, his face is not something Dean wants to see right now.

Even though he likes him.

Dean is a demon. He has a right to be conflicted about stuff.

“How? Why?” Jimmy wants to know and doesn’t seem convinced at all.

“Because a very powerful demon is very interested in them not coming to any harm.” Sam stretches out his hand and a puff of black smoke appears, curling and twisting on his hand. “This is a rather crucial part of the essence of the demon who kidnapped Dean. If I destroy it, she’s destroyed with it.”

“So in other words, we own her ugly ass,” Dean says with some glee.

“Don’t worry,” Sam adds. “She’s good at what she does. Be it other demons or angels, they will think twice about coming near your family after she killed the first few.”

“But she’s a demon!” Jimmy protests. Dean wonders if he should feel insulted.

“And as such you can rely on her self-preservation instincts,” Sam assures him. “Since I’m going to destroy her even if your wife or daughter are mauled by a random poltergeist or hit by a car, I’d say they are now safer than they were ever before. And don’t worry about the bad influence – no demon will go near them unless they have to.”

Jimmy still doesn’t look entirely convinced, but some of the tension leaves his body.

“Now we have to see what to do with you,” Dean says. “I don’t assume you want to stay.”

Jimmy shakes his head. “I want to go back.”

Sam breathes in sharply. “To Heaven?”

“Yes.”

“Cas must know you helped me. He’s going to hurt you.”

“Still.” Jimmy sets his jaw in a stubborn line that reminds Dean of Sam. “I have to go back to him. Cas has been betrayed by everyone he trusted. And I’m not saying he didn’t deserve it, but he’s being controlled by all those things and…” He takes a deep breath. “He needs me. He needs _someone_ to stick with him.”

Were Dean mean he could argue that a single human soul isn’t going to make a difference to a self-proclaimed God. But he has to admit that he’s a little impressed here. Nothing will make him any less angry with Cas or make him kill the dick any less slowly if he gets the chance, but he has to admire this loyalty to someone who never offered any favours in the first place.

Even if Cas betrayed them – betrayed _Sammy_ – before he ever absorbed purgatory. Maybe Dean should say something after all, since Jimmy is walking the very thin line between loyalty and idiocy.

But Sam is quicker. “If you really want to return, I’ll help you,” he says. “For the angels who saw us it must’ve been hard to tell if you helped me escape of if I took you hostage. We’ll make it look like you managed to escape from here.”

Jimmy looks sceptical but a little hopeful, too. “You think that’ll work?”

“I don’t know,” Sam openly admits. “But think how easy it was for you to free me. I think Cas wanted me to get away.”

“Why?”

“You know why, right?” Sam looks at Jimmy and Jimmy looks at Sam and Dean holds Sam a little closer, feeling left out because he doesn’t know anything.

Eventually Jimmy nods. “Not sure that’s going to help.”

Sam turns to Dean. “You have any messages for Cas, Dean?”

It seems random and takes Dean by surprise. “Apart from that I’m going to fry his ass the next time I see him? No.”

But Sam seems satisfied with that. He says goodbye to Jimmy, thanks him for his help and orders two demons to escort him to the surface and then make sure to get away before any angels show up.

When they are gone, Dean and Sam are alone and Sam sways a little on his feet.

“Easy, tiger!” Dean is there to support him but he can feel Hell in Sam’s mind. That he can still feel it is a good sign, though, because just before it all breaks out the connection always weakens, as if Sam were trying to protect him. He probably is, despite not even sensing the bond the way Dean does.

Now, Dean has to distract him before things get out of hand. And get him to rest. He leads his brother to the chamber that serves as their bedroom and guides him to sit on the edge of the bed, all the time talking nonsense, just like he did when they were alive and he needed to distract Sam from a broken bone. Sam doesn’t say anything, just plays around with the bandage on his arm that will forever serve to fuel Dean’s hatred for Cas.

He wants to lie down with Sam and hold him close, but first he needs to wash up, get rid of the stink of Meg’s torture chamber. He’s not going to take that into bed with Sam.

There’s water coming out of the ancient looking tab in the adjoined bathroom that only contains a large bathtub. The water is cold, but Dean doesn’t mind. This might be the only place in Hell that has any water at all.

Except for the stinking basins in this fourth circle where they like to drown soul for fun.

All the time while he’s washing up, he keeps his mental fingers on Sam’s soul, feeling it gradually calm down. The relief about having Dean back is getting stronger by the second, as if Sam only now realised it’s all over and the mere knowledge that Dean is close to him is enough to keep the cage far away.

When Dean emerges back into the bedroom, Sam is still sitting on the bed, the bandages that used to cover the cuts in his arms now lying in heaps on the floor.

Sam looks up and offers a tired smile. “It stopped bleeding,” he says.

 

 

+*+*+

 

 

“So,” Dean says, flopping down beside Sam who’s naked like him and half-twisted in the covers of their bed. Despite the picture they would offer to anyone stupid enough to come in they haven’t done anything, though Dean would seriously like to. He wants nothing more than to press Sam down into the mattress and make him forget the rest of the world even exists. Instead he says, “Kidnapped, huh?”

Sam blinks at him. “What?”

“You said Meg kidnapped me. I’m not a kid, Sammy.” He reaches out to stroke Sam’s cheek. “I’m very, very much not a kid.”

Sam leans into his touch and closes his eyes, exhaustion radiating off him in waves. “Neither am I, and yet you keep calling me Sammy.”

Dean kisses him, much gentler than he feels like doing. “You love that. Admit it.”

“I love _you_. I’m willing to make sacrifices for that.”

Dean would like to have a snippy retort to that, but all he can think of is Sam going to Heaven for him. His fingers find the deep cut on Sam’s lower arm and carefully trace the line of uneven stitches. “Jimmy did this?”

“Yeah. He helped me a lot.”

Dean barely listens, too distracted by the injury that is so minor compared by some they suffered while alive. Thanks to Sam’s nature being so in tune with Hell, the cuts finally stopped bleeding when Cas said they never would, but they still look ugly and probably hurt like a bitch. They won’t magically disappear like wounds suffered on a rack. Just like all the bruises and the raw and burned looking skin that was covered by the shackles, they will heal at a normal pace and leave scars.

Worst is the burn on Sam’s stomach. It’s hard for Dean to even look at it too closely. His fingers shy away from touching the symbol and even with their bond he can only guess how it feels to have something like that branded into his skin. This one will not heal, but they can’t allow it to remain there either. If there’s no other way, Dean will cut it out himself. He’d hate doing that, but he’d hate someone else doing it even more.

And afterwards someone will have to pay. He’ll find the angel that did this and there will be nothing, absolutely _nothing_ merciful about his death.

It’s at times like this that Dean has to face the fact that the demon inside him, the one willing to tear apart the world and not waste a single tear on it is mostly just him. Because he would tear the world apart for Sam and smile as it burns. Sam isn’t all that matters to him but without Sam nothing else would. And if someone were to take his brother from him for good…

…he would stop being Dean Winchester then, plain and simple. Dean Winchester doesn’t exist without his brother, and the thing he would become wouldn’t have any reason for mercy.

“Why did Cas let you go?” he asks quietly.

Sam blinks at him, slow and tired. He looks like a lazy cat. Safe.

“You said to Jimmy he wanted you to get away. Why? Did he suddenly have a change of heart and become nice again?” The thing is, that wouldn’t even matter to Dean. Maybe it would have, once. Not now.

“No,” Sam says. “He’s exactly as you saw him last. But there’s something Jimmy told me. He said he kind of sees Cas in his real form whenever he takes over his vessel, and lately Cas is nearly gone. There’s just all those things from purgatory, like shadows, and Cas is somewhere inside that. Jimmy said he sometimes hears him call out.”

He doesn’t need to say any more – Dean can see where this is going. “He wants me to help him.”

“He wants you to kill him, yes,” Sam confirms. “He knows you’re the only one who would be stubborn and determined enough to try and kill God. I guess it’s the only way out he sees for himself. He can’t go back.”

“And he hurt you to provoke me into trying.” Dean clenches his hand, the one not stroking Sam’s arm. The news of his former friend being desperate and suicidal does nothing to make him think any more fondly of him. Not when Cas, influenced by purgatory or not, thought it was okay to torture Sam in order to reach his goal.

“I guess everything he does is influenced by the souls,” Sam says softly, as if reading his mind. “It gets twisted, even when he’s working on his own destruction. They’ve become one, and what is left of Cas hates himself yet isn’t able to care enough to not want to hurt us.”

“He hates himself?” Dean asks sceptically.

“There must be a reason he allowed Jimmy to see everything they did to me. I think he wanted him to see what Cas has become.”

It’s so abstract, and so typically Sammy to analyse things like that while he’s being tortured. But even if he’s right, it doesn’t matter. Cas destroyed Sam’s only protection against the cage, thus effectively killing him and causing Sam and Dean to both end up in Hell, when he was still very much himself.

“You know that changes nothing, don’t you?” he says quietly. “I’m still going to kill him.”

Sam finally opens his eyes fully and looks at Dean, and Dean doesn’t need any special bond right now to see his feelings. Worry for Dean overlaps all. Not doubt in his abilities to kill anything he sets his mind on killing, just worry because he loves him and killing God is pretty damn big. “We’ll do it together,” he says before reaching up and pulling Dean down so he’s half lying on Sam. Skin against skin, both their bodies hard with muscles and marred with scars and warm and there.

Dean shifts around until Sam is resting in his arms and allows him to fall asleep. He knows his brother is hurting and exhausted beyond belief, hasn’t been able to sleep for more than a year. They have been separated for far too long, have both been tortured and used, but that’s over now. Dean will finally find rest in the knowledge that Sam is in the only place that is truly safe: here, in his arms, protected and protecting. Now he can heal. They both can, and they both will.

For now, that is all that matters. Everything else – defending their devil’s gate and their territory, reorganizing their men, even Cas – can wait.

Dean buries his face in his brother’s hair and closes his eyes.

His sleep is dreamless.

 

 

+*End*+


End file.
